Jesus Cake

Yes, there is such a thing. Back in 2005 (or so) I co-wrote a play with 2 fabulous friends (Laurel Hufano and Aral Gribble) entitled: Jesus Cake, Fat Pants and the Theory of Relativity. We wrote this play in a week after exchanging stories about the weird traditions of our families around the holidays. The Jesus Cake part was mine.

Hand to the goddess this actually happens in my family. Every year, my Grandmother Joanne McKee has us over on Christmas Eve. After the presents and whatnot, she brings out an Angel food cake (food of the angels), covered in white cool-whip frosting (for purity) topped with 3 candles (father, son, holy spirit) and as children we were made to sing happy birthday to jesus. What started as a scared religious tradition has turned into a kind of amusing farce for my younger brother and I, who still sing along, but perhaps more loudly and more musical theatre-y than everyone else. To him, an atheist and me, an enemy of patriarchal religious bullshit (and happily so) singing happy birthday to jesus christ is like singing "for he's a jolly good fellow" to Santa Claus. So, yes, perhaps now it is a joke. We laugh about it, we humor our grandmother, we tell stories of it to our friends, we write plays about it.

Laughing aside, it says volumes about the constructs of gatherings in my family. It says volumes about tradition.

How does tradition become, well, tradition? Who decides which events/activities are long term things, which are special, or unique (or odd) just for a particular year?

How many times have I gone to this house, on this day and done these activities for these reasons...because that's what we always do, that's how we've done it since I was a kid?

Since I was a kid- We went to Grandma and Grandpa McKee's on Christmas Eve. We meet downstairs in their den, we sit by the gas fireplace and eat hours devours off of the "bar" (never used to serve alcohol). We play with the ping-pong paddles, or the wooden maze game while our parents carry down presents. My grandfather says grace, we fill our plates with the unchanging menu of salad, sandwich meats, cocktail wieners, bean dip and sit at the pool table now covered with 2 pieces of plywood to become a dinning table (I also don't ever recall actual pool being played on this). After dinner, my grandfather reads the christmas story from the bible, we open stockings and presents one at a time, we sing happy birthday to jesus and we all go home.

This is what we had always done. This is how my grandfather had designed it...

The thing about tradition though, is that it doesn't change. Or didn't change in my family. In my case those determining/designing the traditions-they are the one's brimming with nostalgia about the good ol' days-when there was only christmas (no Hanaukkah, or Solstice or Kwanzaa), when everyone was able-bodied and married before children and certainly heterosexual.Where popular movies and TV were poisoning the minds of our youth-- When husbands knew what was best. Where wives knew their places...

The thing about these traditions were that they didn't change.

So the year that my great-grandmother was in the nursing home with advanced dementia, we gathered anyway, without her, my older brother and I leaving in protest and going to see her. Upsetting the family.

The year after my father had his stroke, we gathered. Down a flight of stairs where he could not go . My mom and I taking turns keeping him company upstairs.

The years where my brother and I rejected Christianity and refused to fold our hands in prayer, we gathered. My cousin, who was in Campus Crusades for Christ, given the Christmas story to read. (A side note: this wasn't too bad as it gave me script material for days. Reading the christmas story she informed us that the 3 wise men brought baby jesus presents of gold, muhr and Frankenmuth. For those of you outside the state of Michigan, Frankenmuth is a faux-Bavarian village known for its fried chicken and year round christmas store)

The years I saw cousins bringing boyfriends, girlfriends, fiancees that were welcomed while I told that bringing my girlfriend/partner would be selfish, would be creating a scene, would be making it all about me, we gathered

This is what we had always done. What I had done, even as an adult.

The problem is traditions don't change. But we do. At some point the tradition breaks, sometimes it is a slow unraveling, sometimes a sharp electric shock breaking it apart. In my family tradition gave way via sink hole.

Pressure built up on this family spot. Pressure in the form of loss of control over who is dating who, marrying who. Pressure from resistance to new bodies, to wheelchairs, to canes, to weight gain, weight loss. Pressure from music and books inspiring new thoughts, pressure from speaking when not spoken to, pressure from taking up space, pressure from vegetarian options and gift receipts and driving in from out of town.
And finally, the pressure in 3 different arteries, a build up of blood and fluid behind 3 different clots...3 hearts. Stopped.

Sink hole

Sink hole

Sink hole


brother

grandfather

father

Then something else

More breaking through

Sink holes from opening of hearts

From new partners, new loves new family

Sink holes revealing possibility

Sink holes freeing us

Last Christmas eve, we gathered. At my grandmothers house (now a widow). 3 people missing (brother, grandfather, father). 3 men missing.

My partner, by my side

Tradition cannot exist with 3 sink holes. The more you try to pretend everything is the same, the more weight you pile over that fragile ground, the more it collapses. The more evident the losses become, the more obvious the change.

3 men missing and all the sudden things changed. My grandmother, who in the past had been there, scurrying around making sure snacks are stocked, stockings are in place, pictures are being arranged...suddenly stopped. She pulled up a tall chair, and arranged some boxes next to her. She called everyone by the fireplace and took out a long list. She read with a loud strong voice the stories behind the treasures she had wrapped in each box. Each member of my family was given an item from her and my grandfather's life together. For my uncle-the ashtray from the restaurant the first night they had met, to my mother, an ornament to pass on to her grandaugther, my cousin, a broach from a special trip. She read slowly and confidently from her chair. She had become the matriarch. She was changing the tradition.

One by one, my family opened their small treasures-

I was last.

She brought out a large box and handed me a long list

The box was filled with items from my great great grandmothers, my great aunts, my grandmother. Each had a story, each was sacred to me

I wondered, why had I been gifted with a whole box of treasures when everyone else just had one apiece?

As I hugged my grandmother in thanks, she answered my question before I had asked it:

"I wanted you to have these. You are the history keeper of the family so it seemed fit"

I am the history keeper

The herstory keeper

Like my grandmother and great grand mother before me.

I keep the herstory of my birth family and thanks to my partner, have started new traditions in our family together. Some day our traditions too, will have to change and flex and be formed anew

I look forward to that very much.