Yesterday while coming home on the subway I logged onto BCP from my Blackberry. Before long I was reading BiscuitDoughJones’s passing reference to a heart-warming story from her youth — the Christmas her Grand-Daddy got drunk and started firing his shotgun into the sky, hoping to bring down one of Santa’s reindeers. I was soon helpless with laughter at the idea of this Coen Brothers-esque holiday moment, and soon was reminded of one of my own. In my family, it is known simply as Hell Easter, and it is rarely discussed. After the jump, read my horror story.

The cast of characters:

My sister, ridiculously hot-headed and occasionally violent. She played ice hockey and was frequently ejected from games.

My sister-in-law at the time, the Whitest-Trashiest biker chick you could ever imagine, covered in tattoos and completely insane.  Remember when Charlize Theron uglied herself up to play that killer? She looked like that. Oh, and she, too, was violent, occasionally beating on my brother and slapping around her daughters from her first marriage.

My brother, a good guy with a self-esteem problem, apparently. It is the only way to explain how he married this woman. Thankfully he ultimately extricated himself and got custody of all four children, his two step-daughters and his two sons with the Biker Chick.

My mother, an upper-middle-class Nancy Reagan type consumed with appearances. Think Mary Tyler Moore in “Ordinary People.” I am certain my brother married the biker chick solely to piss my mother off, because she treated him worse than MTM treated Timothy Hutton in that film.

My two little blond-haired and adorable nephews and my two lovely nieces, sweet girls who deserved a better mother.

Me, 21 and hating my family’s guts, with the exception of the children. I believe I was also hungover from a night with my boyfriend at a boozecan.

So I don’t know what started it. I believe it had to do with my grandfather’s funeral the previous fall, and the Biker Chick’s bitter complaint that my mother had failed to invite her. My sister and I pointed out that you generally don’t invite people to a funeral, you just expect that family members will attend if they want to.

It got louder. My mother pretended it wasn’t happening and hustled the kids out of the house and to the local Easter parade. My sister and the Biker Chick started really going at it, with my brother trying to calm everything down. But my sister, who was PMSing, was spoiling for a fight with a madwoman who had already been institutionalized, which was starting to piss me off, because it was a no-brainer how it was going to go.

And sure enough, it went. A no-holds-barred, furniture-destroying, bare-knuckled brawl between my sister and the Biker Chick that apparently went on for about 15 minutes and drew blood on both sides.

I wouldn’t know. Because what did I do? I left the house. I put on my shoes and walked to my friend Ricky’s house, who lived a few blocks away, leaving my poor brother to break up the two shrieking banshees. When I returned two hours later, my brother was repairing broken chairs, my sister had left, and the Biker Chick was sitting on the couch with a black eye. My mother was cheerfully checking on the ham and playing Go Fish with the kids while bitching to my brother that he needed a haircut. Even when she returned to the house to find her TV room practically destroyed and her daughter-in-law with an icepack on her face because her daughter had pounded the crap out of her, my mother still found time to bust my brother’s balls.

My brother pulled me aside to smoke dope with him, and told me I was right to leave.

And it was never discussed again.

Tell us! What is your most horrific holiday domestic dispute?