Christmas Eve Comedian

My favorite thing about large family Christmas Eve gatherings is their ability to provide material for smart alecks.

The best line of this year’s gathering came late in the evening, after the 73-year-old matriarch expressed her hope that we’d all live through 2007 in order to make it to next year’s gathering for tamales. A 20-something grandchild, ignoring the obvious reference the woman was making to her own mortality, yelled, “and just to make sure, make the tamales tomorrow and leave them in the freezer.” Laughter erupted and the spectre of mortality was banished for the evening.

Ay que familias.