Christian Fish

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:01:21 -0500

I am grateful for having abnormal parents.

Otherwise, I'd have to accept the fact that I'm this screwed up and only have myself to blame.

My parents are older. Lots older. Seriously. They dated for 16 years before they married and my father is almost 16 years older than my mother. This is how I can be 37 with an 80 year mother and 95 year old father.

I also came from a rather religiously mixed family. My mother is an Episcopalian while my father is Jewish. The majority of her family is Catholic. Not that "twice-a-year" Catholic but rather REALLY Catholic. If I was to quote them, I'd have to use that Microsoft Gothic Old English font but don't see that as an option in this blog and I'm not quoting them anyway so who really cares....

The story behind this mix is that my Very Catholic grandmother went on a date with a man who had been courting my Extremely Catholic great grandmother. They stayed out too late on a date only to come home and find that this Extremely Catholic female ancestor had locked my Very Catholic female ancestor out of the house. So, Grandmother did the Not Quite as Catholic thing and eloped with the suiter, hereafter known as "Grandfather". He was Danish and Lutheran and after this event she mostly became a ~~Diet Catholic~~ Episcopalian. My great grandmother responded to this by sending my grandmother a pair of red satin pajamas as a wedding gift. It must have worked as my mother was born not long thereafter. Other relatives on that side of the family are either Catholic or Episcopalian as their personal levels of guilt will dictate.

My mother grew up and eventually met (and even more eventually married) the man she felt she could most likely settle for. My mom's Danish and Episcopalian background thus meshing with my father's Jewishness. Or as I like to say, God's Chosen People married God's Frozen People.

Seriously, I live for this.

Religious and age differences were cast aside, at least until the kids came along. The apples of my parents' eye - aka my brother and I came along 2 and 5 years after that marriage, respectively.

If you're coming from your own religiously mixed family and feel that this loving background helped you learn and grow and blossom as a person, well congratulations. I hope the ghost of Norman Rockwell paints your family portrait and your kids are able to attend that nice school in Lake Wobegon.

My family wasn't and still isn't quite that well adjusted.

Truth be told, there was never really a moment that didn't get used as a religious battle - each side ridiculing the fallacies of the other, warring over the souls of the helpless pawns.... I mean, children. There was some good intent. They wanted to introduce us, or at least confuse us, regarding both religions: When we were little, my brother and I attended a private Jewish school in Houston, synagogue on Fridays and church on Sundays. We celebrated both Hanukkah and Christmas - which is pay dirt when you're a kid as all you care about are presents and lots of them. The reality is that I attended that Jewish school believing in Santa Claus, thought that it was Moses hanging up on that cross and honestly (and loudly) wondered why the Body of Christ couldn't come in cinnamon-raisin. I still think that's a good idea. The Hanukkah celebration soon got shortened from 8 days to 5, then 4, then 3 - which admittedly was more than enough time to get a dreidel - and then eventually was entirely left out of our December holidays.

Christmas won that battle.

Gefilte fish won another.

Which finally brings me to the title of this post and a totally funny story:

When I was very little, I asked my father why Christians use that fish symbol. If you don't know which fish symbol I mean, think of the fish that Christians often use on their cars - the same ones that sometimes grow legs and hold tools if the name "Darwin" is in the middle of it - thus ensuring some that the car is being driven by a Godless heathen. But I digress. I didn't ask my mom this question but rather my all-knowing Jewish father. I say he was all-knowing as once, when I first heard that hamburgers came from cows, he assured me that hamburgers did in fact came from ham - "HAM-burgers". As I didn't know where ham came from, I continued to merrily eat burgers, thus keeping McDonald's in business. But I digress again. My father, having thus proven his all-knowingness, I decided to ask him the question about the aforementioned Christian fish. He carefully and deliberately gave me his wise answer:

Once upon a time, a man named John the Baptist was baptising people in the Jordan River. While he was baptising these people, fish in the river would swim around, thus being baptized as well, hence becoming Christian fish.

And the ones which swam away became gefilte fish.

This is why we, as Jews, eat gefilte fish.

Yeah..... I have issues.

In any case, I have told this story to many people. Most find it funny. One doesn't get it. I'm hoping someone here will reply, explaining why it's a funny story so I can forward it onto him, thus vindicating myself and proving I'm an inter-galactic Pez-dispenser of wit and wisdom while he's the equivalent of Shrek's navel lint.

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Christian Fish