As a disenfranchise community we often redefine our families outside of the traditional bloodline while we draw upon our holiday traditions and experiences from our youth. Inadvertently, this draw upon our past causes us pain in the present because our holiday celebrations feel different because the people involved are different.
Our holiday traditions are based on what our parents and other family members teach us. We hold to the idea of certain meals, activities, and rituals to make our holidays whole. As a member of the LGBT community we are often disconnected from our biological families either by choice or relational limitation on their part. Bottom line, sometimes our families just can go where we need them to go! I don’t know a single person that doesn’t struggle in someway with the fact that the holidays bring to the front of our minds the relational challenges and familial difficulties that many of us endure as we walk a different path. The holiday rituals and traditions serve as salt in the relational wound.
An example of what I mean…
As a married man, I had Christmas Eve dinner with my biological family, laughed, drank and celebrated being a part of a larger family. We always ate something special we didn’t normally eat during the year. Near the end of the evening we would ritually allow my children and all my nephews to open one present (often something to wear the next morning that made us all look good for the pictures Christmas morning). We would then go home and my wife and I would prepare the gifts from Santa as the kids wrestled with going to sleep. We would drink a glass of wine, put the bike or other toy together, and we would write a letter from Santa to each of our kids. This letter highlighted the great things the kids did in the previous 12 months and we read the letter to them as they opened the small gifts in their stockings. When I came out, I left my family, was disowned by my father, and had to find my own way as a proud gay man. My first Christmas was extremely difficult. I indirectly expected my new partner and me to have that same Christmas Eve dinner filled with laughter and celebration of being a part a larger family. As we sat down for dinner…just he and I, the reality of all the relational pain in my life can crashing in. I was no longer a part of a much larger family. I now had a new smaller and more meaningful family. We were two lost souls who found each other sitting at a table trying to have a meaningful time. We finished dinner and we looked at each other… “What do we do now?” There were no toys to put together, no letters to be written, and certainly no photos to be taken. We had a couple of glasses of wine as I struggled to appreciate the gift of hope Eric had given me while I wrestled with the sting of sorrow. I wondered what my kids were doing, who was writing the Santa highlight letter, and what my kids would do the following morning without me. We went to bed as I anticipated a very painful Christmas Day. The following morning we awoke without the laughing excitement of children. We exchanged our few gifts for each other then looked at each other and said, “What’s next?” We ended up at a local bar and I decided to drink my sorrow away.
The following year I decided to do something different! When November rolled around we decided to do a different tree. This year we did a tree with white lights, silver and purple balls, and a big purple bow on the top. We each purchased a unique ornament for each other, and we wrapped false boxes to fill the bottom of the tree. For Christmas Eve we decided to have dinner downtown, we ordered more than we could eat, and had the leftovers boxed up into three separate boxes. We then walked to the old church for a Michael Allan Harris concert and handed the food out to our homeless friends on the way. We listened to the wonderful music then made our way home. We sat in front of the fireplace and Eric and I read letters that we had written to each other that highlighted our challenges and victories over the last 12 months. We woke up the next morning, drank mimosas and exchanged small gifts. Our friends came over for lunch then we all decided to hang out and play board games. For the first time, my holiday was different! We redefined our holiday expectations and filled our celebration with joy. We took the painful holiday and turned it into a new celebration. We rewrote the traditions and made new meaning out of our new traditions.
Whatever the holiday, the rituals and traditions can cause us sorrow or joy. To avoid the pain of the holidays it is critical to rewrite the traditions and create new meaningful rituals that build upon our new relationships. We must put our painful memories in their place and create new memories that are based on joy and hope. We can involve other people in our processes, and we can draw upon the traditions of other cultures.
