Homo for the Holidays

by Lindsay Miller

Ah, the winter holidays! A time for getting together with family, friends, and loved ones, eating food and exchanging presents, enjoying traditions that have been handed down through the generations with the express purpose of driving you insane if you have to hear that goddamn “Little Drummer Boy” song one more time.

Yes, the holidays are pretty much always fraught with conversational discomfort and smiling through gritted teeth. But for those of us repping the LGBTQ community, there are some unique social minefields to dance around. Here’s what you need to know to survive the end of the year without taking a sledgehammer to your family home, or — even worse — going straight.

Coming Out

The holidays are a popular time to make dramatic announcements: “Guys, I’m gay / bisexual / changing my name and starting testosterone / getting married / adopting a child.” This is a totally fine idea! Everyone’s together, so you won’t have to go through the same speech five times, and hopefully they’ve all had enough eggnog to be expansive and accepting of whatever you might throw at them. However, make sure you pick the right occasion. Intimate family gatherings are good; huge New Year’s Eve parties with two hundred people are probably not.

And in case your family doesn’t respond well (which I’m sure they will, don’t worry), have an exit strategy in place before you start talking. Be sober enough to drive, know when the bus runs, or have a friend on call to pick you up. Even if you’re staying with your family, the ability to get out of the house, breathe some fresh air and give everyone a little time to calm down can be a life saver. Not recommended even though it’s what I did: coming out to your family in a moving vehicle on your way to Christmas Eve lunch with 40 or so relatives. (Me: “I have something to tell you guys, and I really want you to not be dicks about it.” My punk-ass teenage brother: “You know that’s not something we can promise.”) It worked out fine, but in retrospect could have been a disaster. Please be smarter about this than I was.

Inappropriate Gifts

So you’re butch as all get-out, but your mother keeps giving you strappy pumps. Or you’re a queer dude with zero interest in sports, and your grandpa’s idea of an awesome present is season tickets to the Broncos. Gift-giving is a golden opportunity for the passive-aggressive in your family to remind you of who they wish you’d been. It’s also a time when your clueless distant relatives reveal that they’re not actually quite sure which one you are — Eileen’s daughter? No, wait, she’s the one who lives in Santa Cruz. The year I got my Baby Dyke’s First Buzz Cut, a well-meaning cousin presented me with a gorgeous gift set of brushes, combs, and clips for the hair I no longer possessed.

Be insanely gracious when you unwrap these things, even if your first instinct is that the tags must have gotten mixed up. Say “thank you” politely and sincerely. Then, sometime in early January, arrange a gift swap with some of your queer friends, all of whom will probably have received similarly laughable items. You probably know a drag queen who would look amazing in that shade of eye shadow.

Of course, if there’s one relative in particular who drives you crazy every year with questions about when you’re going to meet a nice boy and settle down, with a lengthy sidebar on whether a nice boy would even like you with all those tattoos, you might want to consider a little passive-aggressive gifting of your own. But you shouldn’t! You definitely should not give your Uncle Merle a framed picture of himself back when he had hair, or your ever-dieting Aunt Betty a basket of the most decadent, buttery cookies you can make. Because it would be hilarious, but it would also be wrong.

Introducing Your Sweetie to Your Family

You may be eagerly looking forward to the holidays because it’s the first chance you’ll have to be embarrassed by your family in front of your significant other. Congratulations! Please remember to come out to your parents at least several hours prior to introducing your girlfriend. I’ve mentioned this already in my column, but it is never okay to recruit your lady as a coming-out-o-gram. That’s a conversation you need to have when it’s just you and the folks.

This isn’t really queer-specific, but if your sweetie is spending her holidays with you instead of with her own family, make a conscious effort not just to include her in your holiday traditions, but to incorporate some of hers as well. Ask her to make some of her mom’s secret-recipe turkey for your big family dinner. (Before I met my fiance, no one in the Miller clan had ever eaten candied sweet potatoes.) Put on her favorite Christmas album while you wrap presents. And tell her what your family traditions are beforehand, so she isn’t startled when she’s called upon to sing “O Holy Night” with your grandma.

Also, if your typical holiday festivities include going to see The Nutcracker, you should definitely warn her about the surprise racism in the second act, because yikes. Unless you just want to see her make the face that I was making last weekend. I’m certain it was hilarious.

Finally, and essentially, you have to have your sweetie’s back. If your family is crazy, you have to let her know what to expect, and then you have to do what you can to place yourself in the line of crazy, so she doesn’t get hit. People who would never say weird homophobic shit to you, because you’re blood, may well think nothing of saying it to your partner. You need to politely but firmly shut that down. If people keep getting your partner’s pronoun wrong, you need to politely but firmly correct them. Basically, you have to remember that you are on your home turf, and she is not, and she’s here because she wants to be with you. It’s your responsibility to look out for her and make sure she’s having a good time.

The Family You Choose

It’s sad but true that many of us will not be seeing our families this year. Plane tickets are expensive, and it’s hard to get time off, and of course there are those of us who don’t get along with our families or just plain don’t talk to them anymore. This is brutal and terrible, but it doesn’t have to and shouldn’t mean that the holidays are canceled.

If you’re not going home, round up some friends who will also be in town and start making plans. Of course, you can treat the holidays as just another day, and if that’s what you feel like doing, then go for it — but if you want to celebrate, make it happen! Your festivities don’t have to resemble anything you saw in a magazine spread or Christmas special; you can do whatever sounds like fun. Decorate potted cactuses with tinsel and lights! Make the hugest sandwich you can imagine! Have a slasher movie marathon! Or, hey, why not do a drag Nativity pageant? See who can come up with the gayest parody of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”? The first time you do something, it’s an experiment. The second time, it’s a cherished holiday tradition. These could be the moments you share with your grandchildren years down the road.

Remember that just because you’re not spending the day with relatives doesn’t mean you’re not spending it with family. The queer community has a long history of forming bonds with each other as strong as, or stronger than, blood. Now is the time to take advantage of that fact.

And if you’re doing awesome, the holidays are a great time to give back to the community. A disproportionate number of homeless youth are LGBTQ — if you have some to spare, think about making a donation to a gay-friendly homeless shelter in your neighborhood, or some other good cause. (Not Salvation Army, please, which has a history of discriminating against and outright refusing to help queer folks.) It’s important that we take care of each other, because no one else is lining up to do it.

Take Care of You

I hate to even bring this up, but the truth is that suicide rates rise around the holidays, and the LGBTQ population is especially vulnerable. If you’re in a scary mental place and you think there’s even a chance that you’re battling depression, please take care of yourself first and foremost by seeking some kind of professional help. I am not even remotely qualified to offer you assistance, but I can tell you that we’d miss you around here.

If you’re experiencing a lower-level gloominess and worrying that you’ll have a Blue Christmas, do something nice for yourself in the midst of all the cooking and shopping and gay-apparel-donning. To paraphrase RuPaul, “If you can’t treat yourself, how in the hell are you gonna treat somebody else?” Make time in your schedule to take a bubble bath with your favorite book. Buy yourself a new, extra-soft pair of gloves while you’re out searching for the perfect boots for your dad. Start a new tradition of Christmas-morning mimosas, and drink one whenever your aunt makes a comment about how pretty you used to be before you started dressing like that. Believe it or not, this season is actually supposed to be fun! Even if everyone around is driving you crazy, you can still do special little things for yourself, because you deserve it.

When in doubt, just remember to be nice to yourself, first and foremost, and be nice to your loved ones, as a close second. That should get you through to the start of January without any major property damage. Oh, and don’t bring Qream to my New Year’s Eve party, or you will be uninvited forever.

Lindsay Miller is really tired of Christmas music.

Image by Bocman1973, via Shutterstock.com