Even if you, your siblings, and your parents aren't technically all related, you can still be a family. That's how families work! You can all come from all over the place, as long as you love and support each other.
However, it still throws you for a loop when family secrets are revealed — and nothing seems to uncover hidden truths quite like DNA tests. They've become incredibly popular recently, and they've made the holidays particularly lively.
It doesn't take much for a family gathering to turn into an episode of Maury, you know? And one guy found this out the hard way when he decided to give his whole family their own DNA test kits for Christmas.
"Earlier this year, AncestryDNA had a sale on their kit. I thought it would be a great gift idea so I bought 6 of them for Christmas presents," he wrote.
"As soon as everyone opened their gift at the same time, my mom started freaking out."
"She told us how she didn’t want us taking them because they had unsafe chemicals. We explained to her how there were actually no chemicals, but we could tell she was still flustered."
"Later she started trying to convince us that only one of us kids need to take it since we will all have the same results and to resell extra kits to save money."
"Fast forward: Our parents have been fighting upstairs for the past hour, and we are downstairs trying to figure out who has a different dad."
It's worth noting that at this point, nobody had even taken the test yet.
"Update: Thank you so much for all the love and support. My sisters, brother and I have not yet decided yet if we are going to take the test. No matter what the results are, we will still love each other, and our parents no matter what."
So, um, Merry Christmas?
The family's mom just had to come clean about a little family secret that wasn't as dark as it seemed. And really, that could have saved a whole heap of trouble ahead of time.
"A good friend of my moms was able to help her through the darkest time in her life, and they went on to fall in love and create the rest of our family."
"Last night she was strong enough to share stories and photos with us for the first time, and it truly brought us even closer together as a family. This is a Christmas we will never forget. And yes, we are all excited to get our test results."
Quite a few people in the Reddit thread shared similar stories, but sometimes not with such happy endings. One told of discovering a "secret great-aunt" after their father took the test and learned that his grandmother had had an affair, got pregnant, and "gave the baby to her neighbors down the street."
Making him a full uncle rather than a great uncle. Surprise! As that user wrote, "Those kinds of bombshells can completely rewrite your family tree."
"My sister and I both took tests a while ago. My parents just got their results in last week," wrote user dell_55. "My mom sighed BIG TIME when my dad matched with my sister. She cheated on him just before she got pregnant."
So that's good, right? But it all goes to show that you might want to think twice before giving the gift of DNA tests.
