Your grandfather is buried under a tombstone with a Star of David.
Someone in your family married a Portuguese.
You have a knoblike bump at the base of your brain.
You were born with six fingers on each hand.
All your ancestors came from Tennessee or Kentucky.
Your grandmother was called something like Mahala Jane.
There are six women named Alzina Louisa in your family tree.
You have an uncle named Milton or Furby.
You are related to both Pocahontas and Christopher Columbus.
You make deals only with relatives.
You suffer from something the old folks call Indian Fever.
Your ancestors lived on property straddling two or more states or counties
and were sometimes counted on the census in one place, sometimes in another
place, without moving.
One line in your family claimed simultaneously to be Scots-Irish, German,
Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, French and English.
You marry your double cousin.
You marry your brother's widow.
Someone in your family married their niece or step-daughter, forever
stumping genealogists.
Your family tree looks more like a telephone pole.
Family history is never mentioned or discussed.
You have an aunt who is Jewish and no one knows why.
Your mother has a letter at the Baptist Church, your father at the Methodist
Church, they sent your brother to the Pentecostals and they sent you to the
Presbyterian Church.
Your mother waves a chicken over her head once a year.
Your family goes down to the river and lets their old clothes wash away
downstream every fall.
Your family makes fun of Catholics even though they have never met any.
You do not eat pork.
You eat pork.
Your father occasionally curses the King of Spain.
Everyone in your family has one name for outsiders and another for use
within the family. The latter are names like Linny, Creecy, Moe and Rube.
You got married at home and the neighbors took pot shots at the arriving
wedding guests.
Most of your family were buried at home. . . within twenty-four hours of
dying.
The log cabin your pioneer forbears built has Moorish arches.
Your great-great-great-grandparents avoided the Trail of Tears but for
unknown reasons ended up in Oklahoma later anyway.
Your ancestors claimed they were Black Dutch.
Your ancestors denied they were Black Dutch.
Your grandparents speak of Daniel Boone and Andrew Jackson as though they
lived yesterday.
Your grandfather never set foot in church until he died and they took him
there in a coffin.
You light candles on Friday night.
You throw a dime into a baby boy's first bathwater.
You cover all the mirrors in the house when someone dies.
Your grandmother is called a Daughter of Israel on her tombstone.
You throw out eggs with blood spots.
Your mother has a menorah passed down to her.
You only read the Old Testament part of the Bible.
You make fun of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
You refer to Jesus as Jesus, not as Jesus Christ.
The family gathers on Christmas Eve to make toilet paper for the ensuing
year.
Beggars are periodically invited to your table.
You believe in fairies showing up to name infants.
Everybody at family reunions faces east and shakes their fists at the Pope.
You clean the house on Friday and put on clean clothes on Saturday.
All the males in your family are circumcised.
You rend your clothes and overturn furniture when a relative dies.
You sweep the floor away from the door into the center of the room, never
out across the threshold.
You know which way Jerusalem lies.
You were told by your father that you were a Jew when you turned 13 (girls
by their mother when they turned 12).
There is a lot of talk about Egypt and the Pharaoh in your family.
Contributed by Teresa Panther-Yates
Your grandmother was a Campbellite and called her church a temple and they
just read the Old Testament.
Your doctors tell you that you have some kind of arthritis but all tests
come out negative and they shake their heads.
You had an aunt that sang in Hebrew at "church."
You had a grandmother and an aunt whose idea of a fashion statement was akin
to Muslim dress.
Your mother shooed away Xmas carolers with no explanation.
No one ever discussed the baby Jesus at Xmas or had a manger scene and you
sang only modern tunes like "Rockin' Around the Xmas Tree" and it was never
written any other way than as 'Xmas.'
Xmas was just about giving gifts to family and the poor and you got gold
candy coins in your stocking.
Your mother's idea of decorating a Xmas tree was to cover it with red birds
and popcorn and Xmas paper was from the Sunday funny papers or just silver
or solid colors.
You heard more about Moses and Noah than you did Jesus.
You were told that you were named after someone that was Jewish though you
did not know a soul that was.
It would have been worse to mention the Pope in your household growing up
than to mention The Rolling Stones.
Your family seemed definitely ethnic but no one was copping to what kind.
