@Rumpel my mother was an Italian-Catholic refugee fleeing Musso and my father was a young Jewish refugee from Germany when they met in New York City in the late 1930's.
My mother's Italian parents liked my father almost immediately when they met him, and my paternal grandfather liked my mom immediately but my paternal grandmother was another story.
First, she threatened to jump out the window if they married, to which her husband responded,
"We're on the Second Floor, you'll break a leg and we will be the laughingstock of the building!"
Finally the day came where my father brought my mom home to MEET THE PARENTS. It was a Friday and in those days the Catholic prohibition against eating meat on that day was still very much in full force. I guess this is where my paternal grandmother found a chink in the armor and she made CHICKEN for dinner, in a classic passive-aggressive future mother in law move.
Dinner commenced and Mom was pushing the food around and around on the plate, and Grandpa finally asked
"Don't you like the food, dear?" and then suddenly he realized what had happened. He took Grandma into the kitchen...to which she protested innocence, claiming to not have realized the prohibition, which was nonsense, she knew.
So, Grandpa came back and told a little white lie:
"My dear, before I became a banker I was studying to be a rabbi, now close your eyes for a moment" whereupon he waved his hands over the plate and intoned:
"You're NOT a chicken, you're a fish, you're NOT a chicken, you're a fish, you're NOT a chicken, you're a fish, okay let's eat!"
And so she ate, and then went to Confession in church the next morning.
Her priest said
"Alby, you said the father claimed he was going to be a rabbi, yes? And he blessed the chicken, yes? God UNDERSTANDS, my dear, you committed no sin." 
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