Screw you Howard.

I've been feuding with God since the mid-nineties, and over the Christmas holidays, God significantly raised the stakes.

We didn't always have such an acrimonious relationship. My parents, bless their naive hearts, had me baptized Catholic. Since I was a baby at the time and the ability to hold my bladder let alone rationalize were years out of my grasp, it was probably best my parents covered the major life decisions for me.

It's also just as likely my parents got tired of my head spinning around and my crib constantly catching fire, so they did what they felt they had to.

I was actually a bit of a religious zealot during my earliest years. My top career aspirations at the time were to become either a bird, a nun, a saint, or an Olympic athlete. Obviously, growing up to be a bird was actually the likeliest outcome based on those options.

I really liked how nuns wore black everyday, which seemed pretty bad-ass. They didn't even have to have their hair yanked into pony tails and barrettes every damn day because they got to wear those head flappy things.

My grandmother, who is still devoutly Catholic, bought me a Children's Book of Bible Stories. This is how I first developed a taste for the horror genre. The book was stuffed full of stories about rivers running with blood, first born sons being slaughtered from house to house, plagues of creepy insects, massive floods and women turning into pillars of salt as they ran from God's wrath.

She also bought me a book about the saints. Even then I noticed that these stories didn't exactly even out well for the girls. All the boy saints got their special place in heaven by doing fun things like talking to animals and leading lost people home. The girl saints had their eyes ripped out and were set on fire.

No matter, because I would be the first to change this. I would do fun things too, and get serious recognition from God, just as soon as I figured out what kinds of fun things to do to get that kind of attention.

God and I were actually pretty tight. Despite the stories I read, I couldn't help but see Him as a pretty good guy. After all, his name was Howard, and it's kind of hard to fear anything named Howard.

For those heathens amongst my ten readers, the Lord's Prayer, which every good Catholic invokes at the first sign of trouble, starts off like this: "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name..."

Seriously, it took me years to discover the prayer we recited every Sunday School class wasn't actually saying: "Our Father, who art in Heaven, Howard be thy name."

Frankly, this discovery made me sad. I liked the idea that there was a God in the sky, and his name was Howard. It just didn't seem as personal the other way.

In those days, Sunday School classes were all about preparing us for our first Communion. First Communion is a huge deal.

Again, for the heathens, Communion is a Christian rite reenacting the last supper. This would be the supper Jesus last hung out with his peeps before dying horribly and having his death memorialized into fashionable jewellery for pop stars centuries later.

He told the guys during this supper that the bread they were eating was his body, the wine they were drinking was his blood, and basically he'd be with them always. Kind of gross really.

Realistically speaking, I find it hard to believe that there wasn't at least one guy at the dinner that night who thought Jesus was being just a little melodramatic, if not completely batshit.

During Communion, consecrated bread and wine are distributed to participants during Roman Catholic mass. Essentially, we were being prepared to eat and drink a piece of Jesus.

This did not go over well initially in my Sunday School class. We rightly wanted to know how the Communion wafer became Jesus, and would we really be drinking blood? We were assured we would actually be drinking grape juice, but this just inspired more questions. How did grape juice become blood? Is it magic?

The grape juice does not actually become blood and the Communion wafer is not actually a piece of Jesus. That would be impossible because Jesus died a very long time ago. It's not magic either, and we shouldn't be asking about evil things like magic spells. The priest has the power to bless the wafer and the grape juice so we would only be consuming Jesus symbolically.

What a relief.

We rehearsed for First Communion. There was a special way we had to line up, a special way we had to sip from the cup and a special way to put the wafer in our mouths but only after saying amen. It had to be "amen," because a "thanks" to the priest was inappropriate.

It's a good thing we had a few run-throughs with regular old wafers instead of the special wafers blessed by the priest. Once the wafers were in our mouths, our next steps were critical. We were in under no circumstances supposed to chew on Jesus.

We were meant to suck on Jesus, and not move our mouths. Any sign of masticating would be a disappointment to our families and to God.

Boys were paired up with girls to walk down the aisle for the big show. I was delighted to be paired with my good friend Marcel, who I had a crush on. We were the two tallest kids in the class so for aesthetic purposes it was meant to be.

We were both nervous about what we'd be wearing for First Communion. As it turns out, Marcel was gay. Given how my life eventually turned out, it shouldn't be surprising that I was already a fag-hag at age seven.

The outfits were actually pretty important. Boys wear suits and ties and girls wear pretty white dresses and veils. Had I known that would be the first and very last time I'd be seen in a pretty white dress with matching veil, I probably would have milked it just a little more.

Fast forward a couple of decades and my relationship with the Catholic church has changed just as radically as my career aspirations. I no longer wish to be a nun. At this point, I think Jesus himself would probably put in a second appearance just to ask me WTF should I ever try.

I do like wearing all black though, because it's still pretty bad-ass. Wisely, I no longer aspire to sainthood. The best I can offer is aspiring to not be such an asshole, and even then I make no promises.

I will never be an Olympic athlete, but I wouldn't mind dating one. Particularly Sidney Crosby. I could do very unsaintly things to that boy.

Growing up to be a bird still comes up occasionally.

My loss of faith in the religion I was raised in breaks my Dad's heart. He doesn't disagree with my reasons for turning my back on the church and wiggling my ass in its general direction, but he thinks I should be able to overlook what are essentially the sins of God's management team on earth, and find value in the most basic teachings.

My Dad is a very good man, and I despise God's management team all the more for being such a disappointment to a guy like my Dad, who is forced to look past a whole lot of sins just to remember the basic teachings.

I'm not nearly so faithful or forgiving. I can not look past the poor treatment of women in the Catholic faith, the rape of children and the years of covering for and protecting those who rape children, the discrimination against gays and lesbians, the mind numbingly backward and dangerous views on birth control that have cost hundreds of thousands of lives because of AIDS and impoverished women denied the right or ability to stop giving birth to dozens of impoverished children, the arrogance behind the belief that women don't have a right to their own bodies, the twisting and tarring of consensual sex between adults as evil or unhealthy, the Pope's stupid pointy hat...

There's not very much about Catholicism I'm still fond of, but I'm very fond of my Dad. Because I am, I will shut my wafer-hole, keep my opinions to myself and go to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve with my family.

One night a year, I call for a truce with God. Yes, it's true I broke exactly three commandments on the drive to the church, but if I'm truly not supposed to covet anything belonging to somebody else then I have no idea how I'm supposed to occupy my time.

(Message to God: If I had the things I covet, then I wouldn't have to covet now would I? Feel free to take that as a hint.)

(Also, taking your name in vain when I banged my knee getting out of the car should hardly be considered that big of a sin. It really hurt.)

(Fine. I did steal the last lemon bar for the ride to the church when I knew my sister wanted to eat it, but I was feeling peckish.)

A half hour into the mass, the priest having sermonized appropriately and the choir having taken all of the joy out of Christmas favorite, Joy to the World, it was time for Communion.

Despite the years in between, all that rehearsing and wearing that pretty white veil are deeply embedded in my memory. Although only once a year, Communion is still an automatic response.

How to form the line, the appropriate response when the priest intones, "Body of Christ," how to cup my hands to receive the wafer, and mostly how to suck and not chew Jesus...

Which is how I ended up choking on the fucking Holy Communion. I'm walking away from the priest, attempting to look pious, when a piece of the Body of Christ lodges in my throat.

I'll say it. I know you're thinking it. You're thinking with all the years of bad behaviour in between holy innocence and now, that I might have learned to suck just a little better. You would be wrong.

There I am, eyes watering, arms ready to flap in panic, airway blocked, and all I can think is...this is pretty damned funny. Out of all the ways to go, this is really hilarious.

I learned in the First Aid/CPR course I completed (all the while having impure thoughts about a fellow classmate) that if you yourself are choking, it's very difficult to perform the Heimlich solo.

The best thing to do is to throw yourself flat out, face forward to the ground in hopes having the air knocked out of you dislodges the food.

This amuses me even more. After having just placed the Holy Wafer in my mouth I suddenly throw myself flat out on the ground? Guaranteed there were people devout enough at that mass who would think I'd just been possessed by Satan, and instead of the Heimlich I'd get some holy water on my forehead.

If I could almost laugh I could almost breathe, and if I could do that I could cough until the piece of Jesus that was trying to murder me sorted itself out. I hacked and I coughed all the way to my seat and through the rest of the mass, disturbing nearly the entire congregation, and likely preventing the word of God as filtered through the priest from reaching them properly.

As far as retaliation goes, it was the very least I could do.