How This Queer Trans Man Reclaimed Christmas

I love Christmas. I always have. Blame growing up in Colorado Springs at the base of Pikes Peak, close enough to the majestic Rocky Mountains that I could literally spit on them. Blame the fresh snow that fell each Christmas morning, so reliably that I took my annual “white Christmas” for granted. Blame my hope and trust in the kindness and generosity of humankind that is the topic of so much discussion this time of year.

Given my love of this holiday and the deeply religious nature of my childhood home, I grew up with idealistic views about what Christmas could and should be. Even as my familial relationships changed when I began to express my gender nonconformity and started dating people who my family didn’t welcome, I always expected that the love and acceptance of Christmas would stay the same.

Sadly, it didn’t. I sat through many an uncomfortable Christmas where my gifts were thinly veiled warnings about my “lifestyle” choices. My aunt gave me feminine clothes and dresses, while others wrapped up pointed books about how to avoid the “liberal” arguments and temptations of popular culture. But my favorites were the gift cards to seminars at Focus on the Family.

So as an LGBT person and as a queer trans man in particular, I’ve long felt a creeping dread that I would eventually have no choice but to give up on Christmas. I’ve seen countless numbers of my LGBT brethren recoil at the religious focus of this particular holiday. The holiday’s language of salvation has so often been translated to “my kind” as eternal damnation that the knee-jerk reaction I get when inviting queer friends to a Christmas party makes sense.

picture: http://www.queenieaustralia.com/formal-dresses

But over the past decade, I’ve decided to reclaim Christmas. It all started a few months after my grandmother’s death from breast cancer in September 2005. Her death rocked my family and sent a fault line down the middle of my parents’ marriage that was never repaired. Combined...