How My Sister’s Interracial Love Affair Tested My Family Ties During The Christmas Holiday – Real Life Yarns 

The dust and the harmattan mist of the Christmas holidays are finally lifting off after spending almost 2 weeks into the new year. But, just as we have heard over the years, the memories made with friends and family during this period will always live fresh in our minds. In the spirit of reminiscing over the holidays, we asked our fam to hit us with the most eventful experience they had during the festive season, and, trust us, you would never have expected the story that came out as our top entry. As the subject of this entry stated, this story is a rollercoaster because we can’t seem to decide if it is hilarious, sad, triggering, or even romantic.

Below is the story as told by 21-year-old Nelly:

I had the most rollercoaster Christmas experience in 2023. So, let me give you a little backstory. I’m half-American and half-Nigerian. My mom is Igbo, and my dad is American, but I don’t have any ties with my American roots because my dad just upped and left after 7 years of being married to my mom in Nigeria. This was after my mom had suffered this whole white supremacy issue from him. So, due to that, my mom warned me and my siblings that she never wanted any of us to have any intimate relationships with white people because they might end up making us feel inferior about our race. All in all, my mom disliked the white race. 

Now, back to the main story. My big sister has been studying for her masters in the US for a couple of years (yes, it took a lot for my mom to let her go), and she was to return home for Christmas. Before then, she had been telling us about her wonderful boyfriend who wanted to get married to her and informed us that he would be returning with her to pay her bride price. So we were all looking forward to meeting him. On the fateful day of her arrival, my brother went to pick them up from the airport. When they got home, it was my brother who entered first. We had used enough eye language over the years, so just one glance at him was enough to know that what was coming wasn’t good. My mom was already getting ready to start dancing when my sister came in with a white guy. It was as if someone clicked “pause” in the room. Her eyes kept going from my sister to the guy and back. I had to break the silence and rushed over to hug my sister, but my mom wanted to ensure she wasn’t in a nightmare. 

She went for the big question first, “Who is this white man?”. I swear, I wanted to laugh, but it was serious. Well, it was not as severe as what was coming next. My sister, not wanting to prolong the awkwardness, stammered, “Mommy, this is my boyfriend. His name is…” Then my sister said my father’s name. The intensity of her arrogance and audacity to not just bring a white man home, but also one who was my dad’s namesake, was so heavy that my brother bursted out laughing. But my mom, the queen of transferred aggressions, slapped him into silence before facing my sister squarely. Loud exchanges layered with a lot of Igbo, and little English started flying from all angles in our sitting room. But, amidst the chaos and my sister’s throaty crying, what was seriously amusing to me was the confusion on her white fiance’s face. Uncle had stepped into the hotspot of madness. And, just when he began to understand the situation, my mom started pushing him out of the house. 

My brother had to step in to make her understand that it wasn’t the guy’s fault, as it was clear that my sister didn’t debrief him about her aversion to white partners or prepare him for the hostile reception he was going to get on his arrival. He also had to heavily reprimand my sister because she had told my mom that her husband was Nigerian. There was too much blame, blackmail, and blind blows flying around. After much screaming, my sister grabbed her fiance by the hand and left angrily. My brother went after them, and my mom spent the next 2 hours crying on the sitting room floor, occasionally using the famous lines of emotional blackmail that Nigerian mothers are known for. 

About 3 hours later, my brother returned with the couple and one additional guest – our pastor. I bombastically side-eyed him for making a move to wash our dirty linens outside, but it turned out that it was my sister who reached out to him to settle the situation. By this time, I was mentally and physically drained from the drama and just wanted it to end. My sister knew my mom well and knew that the pastor stunt could work because she didn’t joke with her pastor’s instructions. Before the pastor could even start the settlement process, that’s how my sister’s fiance just started rambling to my mom about how much he loved my sister and would never hurt her. It was now that the werey was catching up with the issue on ground, but my sister still didn’t catch him up on the fact that my mom’s slippers throwing game was a respecter of no person or race. The slippers sha missed him, and the pastor started telling her that it was the devil trying to destroy her family through her, using the memory and past actions of a man whom she had neither seen nor heard from in 20 years. He advised her not to project her anger at her ex-husband on her daughter and make her miss a chance at being happy. 

Look at me nodding my head at the back, thinking the sermon was finally getting to this woman. But, just when we thought that she was calming down, she started screaming that she didn’t want to see my traitor sister in the house she worked her ass off to provide after our father took off. I stupidly and impulsively interrupted her by saying, “Ah, mommy! She’s not daddy now.” And that’s how I ended up outside with the couple. To cut the long story short, my sister and her fiance had to sleep at the hotel that night and three nights after. It was on Christmas Day that our pastor finally cracked her after visiting our house severally in 4 days. She “half-heartedly” accepted my sister’s apology and let them spend Christmas with us on the condition that she would vet the guy herself. 

Funny enough, when we visited the village, her siblings and parents did not overreact like her. They were so chill because, according to my uncle, you can’t use the behaviour of one man to judge his entire race. Another one of my uncles even said that my mom should blame herself for being a poor judge of character because he knew my dad was a no-good the moment he saw him but had to give in when she kept insisting that she would marry no one but him. He then added that the fact that my sister’s fiance still stayed by her side after the level of hostility he encountered was already proof of how intentional he was, stating that my father would have run away by the first bark at the door. My dad was just collecting stray bullets throughout the holidays. I’m not going to lie; no other Christmas could top this one in years to come.