In my experience they always go away, no matter how friendly I am.
Some of them probably make notes not to visit me again, ever, for fear they will be corrupted.
I grew up in a family of religious strife; sometimes violent religious strife. My European ancestors were a bunch of religious heretics, dissidents... the sort frequently hunted by the authorities for contributing to various troubles, mainly of the Catholic vs. Protestant sort. So Christmas wasn't really Christmas in my childhood until people were yelling and throwing things at one another, crying, or leaving in anger, the tires of their cars squealing down the driveway, scoring extra points if they ran over the mailbox.
Merry fucking Christmas to you too.
Everyone knows Christmas is a pagan Northern European Holiday, the last big party before people start dropping dead left and right, their bodies stacking up in the wood sheds like cordwood, waiting for the spring thaw to receive proper "Christian" burial in the cold mud.
Oh bloody hell, burn 'em all! A huge funeral pyre always cheers everyone up! Throw creepy cousin Gorn's old boat on the fire along with his corpse, the joyous cackling and dancing of his long suffering wife like music to the ears of everyone who knew the self righteous prick.
We'll see you in hell, dude!
(Cousin Gorn was the guy who smacked you because of the Darwin Fish you stuck on your little cart; he always noticed when you showed up at Mass a little hungover and disheveled, and everyone knew he was fucking fifteen and sixteen year olds in the ass whenever he had business in the City...)
Yep, that's my experience with Christianity, even though I'm one of the pacifist sorts, because I have to be.
I have some really funny stories about going to church with my mom. My mom is the sort who will say what she's thinking to anyone, people in authority, doesn't matter. We got kicked out of quite a few churches, sometimes to the point where big men were stationed at the doors to keep her out.
That was one of my great worries the night before my Big Catholic Wedding, that someone would irritate my mom, or worse, her mom, my crazy berserker grandma, and it would be something our family could never recover from.
By some blessed miracle they behaved themselves.
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