How do you feel about the holidays?

[RemyZee]

I used to adore the holidays as a kid, and when I could celebrate with other people, but doing it alone and doing blue collar work makes the holiday season seem tragic, expensive (you don't get paid for the full shift even if you get the days off, so December, the month you have the most expenses, you have the least pay) and isolating. I don't like driving to visit my parents. They're lovely but every time they bring up church or politics. Glad to be a grownup but I miss the innocence of childhood. I love the idea of Christmas though.

This will be my first Christmas since I found out something. I look different. My shirts don't fit anymore. My brother asked me why my hair was so much longer, and he knows damn well about the medication. It was never about being liked. When they like you if you're depressed and miserable and playing their role of suffering relative, they like you conditionally. Being healthy has been a slap in their collective faces.

I cannot love the inherent inauthenticity of spending the social, family, and religious side of the holiday trying to look as butch as possible to avoid Those Conversations. I have to be seen: "accoutred like young men. . . .
And wear my dagger with the braver grace,
And speak between the change of man and boy
With a reed voice, and turn two mincing steps
Into a manly stride, and speak of frays
Like a fine bragging youth, and tell quaint lies,"

that when Christmastide is over I shall have to lie in bed at night thinking of it as something that has happened to someone else, and hope 2026 is better, just like I've hoped for better results every Christmas since 2015.

You wake up early , pad barefoot on cold floor to the cramped parlor of your apartment, and put on the gramophone record of Adeste Fideles. Wake up your roommate, trip over the cat and go sprawling on the floor, singing half forgotten songs, cursing at the mirror through a mouthful of toothpaste foam with a shirt and a necktie and a sports bra fighting it out for the home stretch on your shoulders, cut yourself shaving, light the string of bulbs on the little tree you put up at the last minute, telephone everyone for the whole afternoon, hurry hurry hurry into your winter coat and go out and crank the car so we all go to midnight Mass and stand in a room full of people, some slightly intoxicated, and we'll all raise our voices in the same song of the angels to those midnight shepherds knowing damn well they'll spend the other 364 days of the year shunning you, speaking negatively behind you, refusing to hire you, actively voting for you to have less rights, standing up for institutions over experience, and if you end up dead by accident during the year, they'll have the decency to bury you under a name that is no longer your own. One remains acutely conscious of this especially if one, like me, is rather ugly and shy in public places.

I think I would rather sit somewhere with a cup of tea and one of the cats in my lap and rest til I think about nothing at all.

Childhood innocence and time to spend with people you love, with the idea that they actually do love you no matter what and you love them as well, is nice. Its absence leaves a vacuum.

I like your writing!

 

[RemyZee]

I used to adore the holidays as a kid, and when I could celebrate with other people, but doing it alone and doing blue collar work makes the holiday season seem tragic, expensive (you don't get paid for the full shift even if you get the days off, so December, the month you have the most expenses, you have the least pay) and isolating. I don't like driving to visit my parents. They're lovely but every time they bring up church or politics. Glad to be a grownup but I miss the innocence of childhood. I love the idea of Christmas though.

This will be my first Christmas since I found out something. I look different. My shirts don't fit anymore. My brother asked me why my hair was so much longer, and he knows damn well about the medication. It was never about being liked. When they like you if you're depressed and miserable and playing their role of suffering relative, they like you conditionally. Being healthy has been a slap in their collective faces.

I cannot love the inherent inauthenticity of spending the social, family, and religious side of the holiday trying to look as butch as possible to avoid Those Conversations. I have to be seen: "accoutred like young men. . . .
And wear my dagger with the braver grace,
And speak between the change of man and boy
With a reed voice, and turn two mincing steps
Into a manly stride, and speak of frays
Like a fine bragging youth, and tell quaint lies,"

that when Christmastide is over I shall have to lie in bed at night thinking of it as something that has happened to someone else, and hope 2026 is better, just like I've hoped for better results every Christmas since 2015.

You wake up early , pad barefoot on cold floor to the cramped parlor of your apartment, and put on the gramophone record of Adeste Fideles. Wake up your roommate, trip over the cat and go sprawling on the floor, singing half forgotten songs, cursing at the mirror through a mouthful of toothpaste foam with a shirt and a necktie and a sports bra fighting it out for the home stretch on your shoulders, cut yourself shaving, light the string of bulbs on the little tree you put up at the last minute, telephone everyone for the whole afternoon, hurry hurry hurry into your winter coat and go out and crank the car so we all go to midnight Mass and stand in a room full of people, some slightly intoxicated, and we'll all raise our voices in the same song of the angels to those midnight shepherds knowing damn well they'll spend the other 364 days of the year shunning you, speaking negatively behind you, refusing to hire you, actively voting for you to have less rights, standing up for institutions over experience, and if you end up dead by accident during the year, they'll have the decency to bury you under a name that is no longer your own. One remains acutely conscious of this especially if one, like me, is rather ugly and shy in public places.

I think I would rather sit somewhere with a cup of tea and one of the cats in my lap and rest til I think about nothing at all.

Childhood innocence and time to spend with people you love, with the idea that they actually do love you no matter what and you love them as well, is nice. Its absence leaves a vacuum.

I like your writing! Thanks for this.

Man, that's a chance to feel alive. I'm salivating over having a day like that soon because I'm going to walk 25 km in it. True north strong and free, baby.

 

[SusanLR]

It was always a happy time for me until my parents passed in 2013.
Just the three of us and a couple of friends nearby that felt like extended family.
The cooking all day with my mom, the meal, giving each other gifts, and I loved the decorating and lights.
Now there is no one left and my house partner just cusses and makes fun of people who decorate.
Takes the joy away. But I have memories left and I can still feel the closeness of those years when we were together.