Jews for Jesus are like vegetarians for pork

Growing up in the Jewish faith, I often find some Christian traditions to be a bit foreign and strange. Take Easter, for example it’s a holy day to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ but than there are all of these rampant bunnies and drag queen coloured eggs and chocolate products to make the story seem more complex and uncertain. After studying art history and the Christian faith through various images I came across this one painting that showed Christ after the Resurrection on a bit of an incline and at the base of the incline there were some little bunnies. Now people can say what they want about Pagan symbols of fertility, but I would like to believe that the bunnies actually found Christ in the cave before Mary M., maybe they woke him up with bunny kisses, maybe they brought chocolate eggs to share or real eggs to colour, bedazzle and display.
Being married to a Christian, I get to experience Christianity through the filter of people that have kept the symbols- the eggs, the Christmas trees and the holy chocolate bunnies without actually having to commit to the faith part or the praying part or any part that doesn’t involve food and drinking and gifts.
The problem I’ve found can often be in the gifts. My in-laws have a family tradition of giving their adult children massive stockings (think hockey duffle bags) for Christmas filled with magazines and bath products and other odds and sods. Enough stuff so that you don’t have to go to the drugstore for basic household items for two months following Christmas. In the spirit of Christmas and generosity I began receiving my own stocking long before I got married. Year after year I looked forward to receiving the gift of bath oils and skin creams and prophylactics otherwise known as rubbers, sometimes called beetle skins in John Irving novels in other words I received condoms for Christmas. For many Christmases, over many years. Condoms that couldn’t be used over Christmas because despite the fact I lived with their son, I certainly didn’t sleep in the same bed with him under their roof. Condoms that went unused because maybe they weren’t our brand of choice because we did, in fact, have a brand of choice. Condoms that went unused because the image of my future mother-in-law lurked within every little square foil container. It was like some brilliant Oedipal survival strategy to effectively interfere with our sex life. We were in possession of these mother-haunted condoms that we couldn’t use and we couldn’t give away. The condoms didn’t stop coming until we got married, at which point I guess the battle had been lost and it was finally time for my husband’s mother to break from her yearly contraceptive buying tradition.
I enjoyed respite from getting festive rubbers for exactly one Christmas season at which point the urge to again participate somehow in our love lives took possession of my mother-in-law. This year for Christmas I unwrapped one of the many gifts from my oversized Christmas stocking to find a special dress-up outfit. As I sat there in the glow of the Christmas tree staring at this pre-package porny outfit I could hear my mother in-law loudly proclaiming, ‘it comes with a pussy purse!’ ‘It comes with a pussy purse!’ When I started to read the label, after my eyes slowly moved beyond the picture of the young double D endowed blond modeling the outfit, I saw that it did in fact come with a pussy purse. A special little black purse trimmed in fuzzy pink marabou sporting a picture of a pink cat and the delicately written words, ‘Sexy Pussy.’ Perhaps it could be used for handcuffs, maybe a small sex toy? It was definitely the right size for the condoms of Christmas past. The pussy purse was only part of a 5 piece set that included: a stretch fishnet TEDDY with TAIL (I’m staying true to the capitalization used by the manufacturers here), a sheer net APRON, “SEXY PUSSY” BAG, EARS and a COLLAR. As my husband’s family sat around grinning and awaiting my response to this fabulous gift, I dryly stated that I just don’t feel comfortable in the bedroom without some kind of accessories purchased for me by my mother-in-law. Sadly for my husband, my mother in-laws involvement in it’s purchase forever puts a stain on the Sexy Pussy 5 pc set, yes even the pussy purse.