Christmakwanzakah OPEN THREAD: A Place to Put Your Feelings on This Merry Festive Holigay

Hello! Welcome to the 5th Annual Christmakwanzakah Open Thread! This is where we gather every year to share stories of gifts, foods, family time, the first thing your dad said when you walked in the door, crazy shit on display at your aunt’s house, what you’re drinking, etc.

raven

That’s your gay homegirl Raven Simone on a segway, plus Gonzo and Rizzo the Rat.

Christmas comes this time each year.  —The Beach Boys

Riese is currently in the frozen tundra of Canadia, Rachel’s flying all over the country and could possibly be in your backyard tonight, Yvonne is deep in the heart of Texas, and me? I’m right here with you, my kickass Autostraddle family. Did you bring the snap peas and carrots? I hope so because I have multiple dips and yet no vegetables. Also Geneva made the gifs! Everybody be sure to thank Geneva for the gifs.

*~Feelings Interlude~* So this holiday open thread business is a thing we’ve been doing since way back when we were tadpoles, and it stands as proof that you — YES YOU, I’m serious, you — are 100% so necessary because just look! You can start a conversation that will make someone else feel less alone/weird/stressed during a potentially super stressful/lonely/alienating time of year! You can take a minute from your ridiculous day to make someone else’s a little more hilarious, or doable, or just better. You know we’ll all be here and we know you’ll be here. Even if you feel super new to AS, you’re still important as fuck. IT’S SO SAPPY AND BEAUTIFUL god I love you.

doge

We put together a holiday pet gallery for you! How do you feel about dogs in plush antlers? Just wondering.

Hey speaking of you being a giant gaybag, Contributing Editor Kaitlyn’s girlfriend Camille has some support and advice on coming out or not coming out this holiday season, is also adorable:

And now for our Important Open Thread Traditions! Muppets and Mariah Carey!

For Riese forever:

It’s time to settle in and think about life, think about the world and your day and the days to come. Don’t forget you can now easily embed imagery into your comments, and we’d all like to see what it looks like outside your window and/or how cute your animals are. I’m going to make homemade hot chocolate now because Trader Joe’s obviously sold out of all their mixes yesterday! Definitely let me know if you have a stellar hot chocolate recipe.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

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lnj

lnj has written 310 articles for us.

322 Comments

  1. So Channukah was over ages ago and now I’m home with no holidays to celebrate and I don’t really know what to do with myself!

    • Movie marathons. Netflix. I swear that’s what I do with my free time. I had an Almodóvar movie marathon after I downloaded all his films, watched ‘I Can’t Think Straight’ and ‘Circumstance’ for the 36354363653 time in a row…
      If I were you, I’d be watching tons of movies in my pajamas with some tea or hot chocolate. :)

  2. Happy Holidays AS! Its only been a couple of months since I’ve stumbled on here, but thank you for being a place where I can be gayx2! I’m working on Xmas for a bit but I’ll have time to come home to see everybody already asleep/passing out

  3. I have no hot chocolate recipes, but if you want to spike your pre-existing hot chocolate, I recommend amaretto. But I bet Fireball cinnamon whiskey would be incredible too.

    • Oh yes, yes it is. Just tastes like heat and deliciousness – kind of dangerous, but soooooooo worth it!

  4. HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO EVERYONE!!! I hope you have a great time with your families, or friends, or alone, or whatever you choose. And I hope all of you who choose to come out this holiday season are welcomed with open arms by your loved ones. <3

  5. I will be spending Christmas day with my missus, my parents, her Dad and most importantly my Grandmother who, 10 years ago, wrote me a very angry letter about me being a gay, and spending too much time in my room…apparently there’s a correlation. I’m wondering if this year will be the year she airs her views for all to hear. I wonder every year. Happy holigays everybody!

    • You can become gay from spending too much time in your room? Haha. I hope everything goes well, Hat. And even if she airs her views, which hopefully she’ll be all merry and in holiday spirit and won’t, no matter how hurtful it is, the rest of your family won’t necessarily agree with said views (it sounds like your parents don’t) and you always have your girl to support you.

      • Thanks, and I do indeed! She is amazing at dealing with my mad Gran Haha. Plus I have the knowledge that we’re the last group of the family Granny hasn’t offended so she has to play nice. Sad but true.

    • Do your grandmother and my grandmother know each other? Mine seemed to have a similar theory about my gayness.

  6. I FORGOT TO TELL YOU IN THE POST but the discovery channel is running a marathon of my alaska show, Alaska: The Last Frontier, on christmas afternoon. #eve

  7. I *almost* came out to my mom in the car before… Somehow we started talking about how it’s always a fight when my parents ask me what my plans are for the day/ hour/ moment and I don’t want to talk about it. Honestly I don’t always have a plan, and it stresses me out when they ask. It has very little to do with being in the closet, or maybe it does? They also always ask, “What are you working on??” Every time they see me on my laptop, which is all the time. She also said how in general she feels like I used to share my every waking moment with her, and now it feels like everything in my life is such a secret. And that makes her feel like a bad mother and that she’s “not enough for me.” It especially makes her sad because she feels like we’re not as close as she was with her (deceased) mother. And it makes her miss her mother more. This all makes me feel incredibly horrible and guilty, but I’m still not ready to come out. I just don’t want to give her more ammmo to hurt me with, you know? I’m already a huge disappointment in so many other ways. She’s just very critical of everything else about me already. I can’t do it yet… Even though I’m a fucking 24, almost 25 year old. Also I recently had to move back in with them, so everything is such a shit storm really all the time and not just for the holidays. This has been a brief summary of feelings. Happy Holidays, homogays! :( On the bright side, I am excited for Family Chinese Food + Movie Day tomorrow (Jewish People “Christmas”), kind of.

    • Girrrrrrrrl. I know your feelings exactly. A lot of people have been puzzled that I waited until I was 23 to come out. I’m grateful I waited because it was something I needed to come to terms with myself- before telling my family who I thought might be unsupportive. While it’s not 100% perfect- the relief I felt after coming out is indescribable. Coming out, however, is on your time-table and no one else’s. Don’t feel like you haaaave to. Trust you’re gut, you’ll know when the moment is right. :) I worried for months that coming out would cause the apocalypse, I’m glad I was wrong. Enjoy the Chinese food!

    • I relate to you on a lot of the things surrounding moving back in with your parents and not being out. It felt so uncomfortable to be around them all the time and keep that from them, but I wasn’t ready to tell them yet, and I’m glad I waited a little while. I waited until I just couldn’t stand it anymore, and that’s how I knew it was time. And I definitely had some “What are you looking at/working on?” moments where I had to quickly close the Autostraddle tab on my browser (usually on Sundays, ahem…) Anyway, good luck! You will figure it out!

      • Thank you for your responses, you are all so rad. I’m feeling sad and really stuck mostly, but Autostraddle is like a comforting cup of tea. The fact that all of you have come out and are doing okay gives me hope. Cheers.

    • I also have fights with my Mom about being secretive and I know that me being closeted is negatively affecting our relationship…but I still haven’t told her either.

    • oh I know what you’re going through. coming out was probably the last super personal convo I had with my family. they’re overly inquisitive and it’s hard to get a moment’s peace or a bit of alone time, which is a must if you’re an introvert like me. I just repeat to myself over and over, “It’s okay to have boundaries.”

    • Don’t worry about how old you are … the time is right when it’s right. I was 25 when I came out (to my mom). There is never a “perfect” time — and when it arrives, you’ll be okay.

  8. Christmas is rather anti-climactic this year. I’m going to spend the day packing because I fly out to North Carolina for a family holiday get together and the flight leaves godawful early on the 26th.

  9. Currently dropping casual “My girlfriend” references around my father, The Most Catholic Man in America Who Has Been In Deep Denial For 8 Years Now, and seeing what happens.

      • Welp, after not responding to any of my casual references I was finally like, “So I have a gf and it’s a thing you should deal with because I’m going to bring her here at some point next time I come home” and he got really quiet and choked up which is weird but sort of better because he’s usually so angry and scary when we talk about it but honestly I’m pretty relieved because I didn’t feel defensive so yeah

  10. For the second year running, I’m spending Christmas alone in Spain instead of flying home to the UK. The reason is that my transatlantic girlfriend is arriving to visit immediately after Christmas and it wouldn’t have been financially sensible for me to fly home just for the brief window between term ending and my girlfriend arriving, especially since Christmas isn’t a huge deal in my family. But even though I’m happy with my decision, it’s still weird being alone in a foreign country where Christmas (and the weather accompanying it) looks very different from Christmas as I know it.

    Part of my ‘weird’ feeling about not going home for Christmas is the general expectation that EVERYONE does it. I’m an EFL teacher, which means most of my colleagues are also from countries that are not Spain and therefore flying off home for the holidays. So, in the last week I’ve had countless conversations with well-meaning colleagues that went like this:
    Colleague: So, when are you going home?
    Me: Um, I’m not. I’m staying here.
    Colleague:
    Me:

    On the upside, my girlfriend will be here soon and that makes any solo Christmas weirdness absolutely worth it :)

    • Whoops, some words got lost. Latter half of colleague conversation should say…
      Colleague: *some variation of BUT IT’S CHRISTMAS and FAAAAMILY*
      Me: *awkward mumbling*

      … though the awkward silence version has also happened a few times!

      Any other weird-solo-Christmas-having ex pats about?

      • I spent a Christmas in Jordan when I lived there for a year and two Christmases in Spain. It gets better! I know how you’re feeling right now.
        Last year I walked into a Starbucks in Madrid and started bawling and had to leave there because they were playing ‘i’ll be home for christmas’
        Focus on that your girl will be there soon. Christmas is just another day. It’ll be over soon. xoxo

  11. i’m sure that this thread will be my safe happy place for the next couple of days, as it was last year. all the feelings (as always) <3

  12. Tomorrow’s my 25th birthday so today is my last day of being 24 & it’s on the 24th & idk it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, turning your age on your birthday & idk i thought it was kind of cool?

    Also in order to ever get anyone to care about my birthday i have to campaign more aggressively than any politician ever, so HEY GUYS GUESS WHAT GUESS WHAT

    though so far today’s been kind of sucky but that might be because i haven’t really eaten anything today which has become a trend & so that might not be helping my mood huehuehue etc. I just hope today stops sucking & that tomorrow is suck-free. I could really use a good day. This year’s been interesting at best, & horrifyingly miserable at worst. I’d like my birthday to not suck, please.

  13. I’m a super lurker but this thread has yanked me from the depths! I live 5 miles away from my folks, and it’s just gonna be us this year (no other family lives near and big bro decided not to come home), so it all just makes me a little sad. But! I roasted potatoes for breakfast, don’t have to work today, and I’m going to clean my room and then go to Mom’s to help her make tamales.

    My biggest weird holiday stress/thing: When I didn’t live here in my hometown, and I would come home, it would be this BIGDEAL and I would be so excited to see everyone and whatnot. And now it’s like, other folks are coming into town and maybe it’s a BIGDEAL for them (but no longer for me) but hey, our lives have all changed plenty since we last saw each other, and although I’m often content with my life decisions, I do start to question them when around friends who have chosen more, um, lucrative or high-wired life paths. So, Fireball for all!

    • That is a weird/stress thing. For what it’s worth, it seems like less of a BIG DEAL every year for me the further away from high school it gets. Maybe this year everybody will surprise you by being on the same page, idk.

      Also, yum tamales! My family had Burger King for breakfast today. :p

    • I feel you, Laura. I’m in the same situation with my father. And I don’t have any hope or encouragement for bright future Christmases to offer…just know that I feel you and you’re not alone. I’m glad I’m not either.

  14. my family doesn’t celebrate christmas so i’m lying around my apartment, drinking a bloody mary and watching “smiley face” on youtube. so far, best christmas ever.

    • my family also doesn’t celebrate christmas but tonight i am going to see the slutcracker with a fellow jew and right now i am hanging out with crushed up aspirin paste on my ear just like stef told me to do to make this dumb blister near my piercing go away. it’s the second time i’m doing it in the past 24 hours and so far, so great! stef i love you <3

      everyone i love you <3

  15. This Xmas is especially weird for me… after a long battle with cancer my mom is in hospice and the doctors say she only has a day or two left. I guess Xmas will always be tied to my mom now, and I don’t know how to feel about that?
    My christmakwanzakah feelings are all confused:/

    • :((( -offers hugs-

      the mom of someone i know is also in hospice right now, because of cancer. i’m so sorry. i don’t even know what to say, because nothing i could say would make it any better.

    • I’m so sorry, Cal.

      I remember feeling a lot of intense and mixed emotions my mom’s last few days. Adding in the emotions of the holidays… wow. My thoughts are with you. Be kind to yourself. <3

    • I’m so sorry. I hope your mom pulls through. Hugs!!
      I know we dont know each other but if you want to talk im here. I know what youre going through, my dad died.

    • That was me 3 years ago, my dad passed away on December 18th. I’m so sorry for what you’re going through!

    • So sorry for what you’re going through. This time of year when everybody is so determinedly cheerful can make you feel extra-alienated when you’re going through a loss. This was my family’s first Christmas without my brother, and although I’m glad I had the chance to spend time with my parents, frankly I feel like I could pretty much do without Christmas from now on. We went through the motions and tried to keep each other’s spirits up, but it just hurts and nothing can change that. Hugs to you and your family.

  16. I’m enlisting the help of my grandmother, cousin, and aunt to help me make a very very gay present for my person. They don’t *know* it’s for my person and they don’t realize how gay it is; they’re just happy I’m showing interest in domestic, Plain Folk things. I’m also inserting my person’s name into every other conversation, but it is sort of hard to know how much to say in front of my young cousins without getting my head bitten off. One of my older cousins, who I am convinced is gay, wrote me a letter completely disowning me after I came out, and I’m not looking forward to seeing her. That’ll be rough. I also saw ex-gay literature on the kitchen counter. That’s great.
    The last time I saw my paternal grandmother, she told me I was gay because of the patriarchy so seeing her should be interesting.
    So far, my younger sister admitted she’d had a pregnancy scare last year, my grandmother used a racial slur, my grandparents admitted my aunt was probably conceived pre-marriage, my aunt and uncle keep making jabs at Bush and the racist media which is annoying everybody else, everybody’s trying not to say anything about the spinsterhood of my 30 and 28 year old cousins, and absolutely everyone is trying not to mention my gayness or the fact that my grandma’s super-estranged biological father just died and was secretly Jewish (the horror).
    Fa la la la la.

  18. I’m trying to recover from last night’s epic 5 hour Cards Against Humanity marathon. We played until we were out of white cards, including every expansion pack. I’ve never laughed so hard and also felt so incredibly offended at the same time.

    I recommend chili powder in hot chocolate.

    My dog is super into playing dress-up, so we often do themed photoshoots. It’s impossible to pick just one picture, so this is the photoshoot for this Christmas and this is from last Christmas

    • just straight up chili powder, like from the kroger tin? because i could totally do that.

      i’ve been sick since about an hour before christmas dinner. at this point i’m sick of water and tea and am contemplating what beverages i could doctor for “medicinal purposes.”

  19. I am awaiting the impending rush of crazy family. Misgendering and thousands of questions commence shortly.
    I hope everyone else has a good holiday!

  20. the older i get, the more bearable my relatives are. is this the death of my personality? is this the crumpling of civilization as i know it? and most importantly… do we know what channel frasier comes on w/r/t cable tvs in NJ?

  22. For Thanksgiving I got this little gem from a family member: “You’re too skinny, but at least you’re not fat like your sister”.

    REALLY looking forward to what will be said tonight!

    I come from a Mexican family, so we stay up til midnight and unwrap presents then. Which means I will be in my pajamas all day tomorrow doing nothing but watching ALL of the episodes of “The Wire”. (I’m sooo late to this. I know, I know!).

    p.s. I did no x-mas shopping. Everyone is getting gift cards, because bah humbug.

    Happy Holidays, AS! Try to stay sane.

    • ahahahha that’s how it is on my Mexican side, too! Never the right size. Always too fat or too skinny.

  23. thanks Laneia thanks Autostraddle. This open thread and comments are the cutest / best. Mrray Crhistmssaarsrsrs and happy holigays everybody~

  24. This will be my official second “out” Christmas… I’m hoping for a significant decrease in awkwardness from last year.

    … Also my Christmas plans kind of sound like that horrible 12 days of Christmas song: *ahem*

    On the first day of Christmas, my true love made me go:
    To an expensive dinner with her fam-il-yyyyyyyy.

    On the second day of Christmas, my true love made me eat:
    One Christmas dinner and an entire gingerbread house!

    On the third day of Christmas, my true love made me go:
    To one Christmas breakfast and a second dinner with her step-mom

    On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love made me:
    Sneak Taco-Time into two separate movies

    On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love is leaving me:
    For a epic Skrillex concert with her best friend

    On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love made me go:
    To a Christmas party with her parents

    On the seventh day of Christmas, I made my true love go:
    To an strange pizza party for my grandpa..

    Ok ok, so maybe it wasn’t 12 days of Christmas, only 7. But still. It is an insanely busy Christmas. But we are truly lucky to have accepting families who love us… (yay for gay parents – on my side at least)

    Oh… and my brother who has been ignoring/not speaking to me for the last year told me it was time to “bury the hatchet” .. I hope that means he wants to make up and not that he wants to murder me. Only time will tell I suppose.

    Merry Christmakwanzakah to one and all. Oh and a wonderful and happy 2014.
    (Oh and please forgive my awkward first ever post to an Autostraddle comment thread – I’ve been a silent observer for two years now)

  25. My girlfriend lives states away and neither of us can afford the airfare or can get any time off of work. So I’m looking forward to some quiet time, my sister and her daughter are spending the holidays with her boyfriend and his family. Christmas to me will be a marathon of Bravo OnDemand or it did because I just found out that they are already back home and family members from out of town will be descending upon my home this evening which is not company ready in the least. Merry Christmas! Maybe this should be when I come out to everyone.

  26. i apparently decided to pretend that christmas wasn’t coming, planned nothing, and then here it is christmas eve and i feel a bit out of sorts.
    my christmas growing up was very church centric, and when that stopped being my thing i stopped wanting to go home. but i always had close friends and family around during what is at least a day off for most of the US.
    and then 2 weeks ago i helped my oldest friend/basically my sister move from new york to chattanooga, and now i pretty much feel like new york is empty. sure, i’ve talked her more in the last two weeks than we did when we lived together, but i still feel her absence like a giant hole. and i don’t know what to do to fill it.

    so i guess this is a sad christmas for me. i guess this is ok.

  27. My family celebrates Christmas despite being Pagan, but I’m hoping to spread some Discordian Moosemas cheer this time around with some moosemosas. MOOSELTOV EVERYBODY!

  28. Happy Christmas Eve, friends!

    Am I the only one worrying about a potential Christmas dinner family blow-out over Duck Dynasty? I’ve never watched the show and I don’t care what those ignorant assholes think of me. However, half of my family is super obsessed with the show and my crazy aunts and uncles keep posting things on facebook about supporting the Duck Dynasty people while the other half the family comments on the posts calling them idiots.

    I’d really like to just avoid the subject because my family is generally pretty great and have always been nothing but supportive of me and my other gay cousin, but holy shit if someone starts spouting off about the first amendment and Duck fucking Dynasty I might lose it.

    I guess I’ll just have to keep stuffing my face with cookies so I can’t talk.

    • oh GOD i hadn’t even thought about that, but at least one of my family members would say something too.

    • This is exactly what I’ve been dealing with the entirety of my winter break. “Haven’t you ever heard of forgiveness? The man is ignorant…you can’t hold it against him.”
      After that I checked out.

      • OMG my family just brought it up. We made it this far without talking about it and now… “Freedom of Speech! Ever heard of it? People don’t watch Duck Dynasty for rednecks’ opinions. Who cares! They should let him back on the show.” I am checking out, there’s nothing I can say…

    • Having lived television-free for the past 8 years, when I returned to my parents’ house and saw that TV shows centered around hunting and fishing actually exist, I couldn’t believe it. As in, they show people killing them on television, in real life. I’m not one of those preachy, can’t-sit-at-a-table-with-meat-on-it vegetarians, but this still shocks and upsets me, almost to a traumatizing degree. Like, way more so than when friends go hunting (which I actually admire, my whole diet philosophy is “if I can kill it, I can eat it”. It just so happens that so far I haven’t/can’t/won’t kill any animals. So I’m veg). But I most certainly do not find it OK to show that shit on television- I’m very affected by those images, as I imagine others are too- you can’t just shove them in to people’s faces while they’re flipping through the channels. Suffice to say, my short-lived stint with television is over.

  29. Considering the fact that my family is fucking delusional and allowed my older sister to emotionally and physically abuse me for years, I’ve decided to fly solo this Christmas and stay home to catch up on “Game of Thrones”. I’ve got curry, ice cream, and three bags of Lindt chocolates! I’m set.

    • seriously this sounds like an awesome way to spend christmas, esp the curry situation. oh LET US KNOW WHEN YOU FINISH THE RED WEDDING EPISODE.

    • In my humble opinion “Game of Thrones” and Lindt chocolate is the correct response to any and all situations.

      On a more serious note I’m really sorry to hear about what your sister put you through and that your family wasn’t there for you when you needed them most.

  30. My ex asked to come visit for xmas and I made excuses — even though we’re good friends now, it would be too sentimental and awkward, so this is my first solo Christmas BUT! i have a fellow Straddler coming over tomorrow to watch movies with and stuff our faces with holiday-themed foods. :) Autostraddle makes everything betterrrrrrr.

  31. Being sick on Christmas Eve sucks. At least I can cuddle with my mom’s kitties while everyone is out at church.
    Going to my mom’s for the holidays is always a high-risk scenario. Last year I left 2 weeks early because my mom was back on drugs, she was fighting with my step-dad, and all sorts of shit was going down. I packed my bags, spent the night at my sister’s, and flew home the next morning. She’s sober again, so hopefully this year will be less traumatic for everyone involved

  32. So. Last Christmas I was alone and at the beginning of an epic panic disorder flare up that would lead basically to a nervous breakdown which would lead to me finding my trinity of things that make me actually not afraid of life (meditation, medication, therapy) which would lead me to loving myself and actually living, which included dating for the first time since my divorce/realizing I was queer, and also finding Autostraddle which led to going to Camp 4.0 which lead to me coming out to everyone on Facebook and then getting a dream job and moving across the country a mont later. So this Christmas I will be with my sister and my niblings (which is a word I just learned that is gender-neutral/plural for nieces and nephews) and life is pretty great. Wow.

    Right now I am sitting on the couch in the sun in sock monkey pajamas, doing laundry and listening to my cat destroy some paper I left lying on the floor in the other room.

    <3

  33. On December 24, 2013, I finally won the “I am not going to church on Christmas Eve” argument so now I am sitting on the couch with my parent’s dog and a How I Met Your Mother marathon being a heathen. Then we are going to go to my gay aunt’s house who always actually remembers I’m a vegetarian and makes sure I have things to eat so that will be fun.

    Also my sister has become a vegan in my absense so I’m officially not the weirdest one in my family, according to my parents. They’re focusing so much on her “impending withering away” that nobody’s noticed I failed two grad school classes this semester. SCORE.

    • the first year we finally didn’t go to church on christmas, it was probably one of the best gifts ever.

      • update: while my family is at church, I am watching Rent because I have decided it’s a Christmas movie. I’ve never felt like such a heathen as I watch a movie that prominently features a drag queen in a Santa costume.

        • you are the second person who has referred to rent as a christmas movie recently! the first was a friend who was annoyed because a coworker kept pestering her for her favorite christmas movie even though she is jewish.

  34. i forgot to buy a slip to wear under this shirt i’m pretending is a dress tonight, so now i’m going to target but just to update you, the hot chocolate recipe on the side of hershey’s cocoa is pretty legit.

    • Thanks for the update on hot chocolate! I plan on making some later, but I put too much bourbon in my eggnog, so we’ll see if there is a later

  35. Oh and this is my cat taking a break from the exhausting job of trying to eat the Christmas tree without being caught:

  36. My birthday was two days ago and my parents hosted a birthday dinner for me and I ended up having shouting fight with my brother and his wife and I’m still feeling really shitty that that happened on my birthday. :( My brother started going on about some guy (named Duck Dynasty?) that said some “supposedly” homophobic things except that it’s not “gay-bashing” because blah blah blah (because my brother will leap to the defense for any straight white cis man, especially conservative Christian man, to do and say anything he wants with no consequence.) I told my brother repeatedly that I did not want to talk about this on my birthday and he continued to simply talk AT me about it, then when he goaded me into a response he got all mad I’d interrupted him and then again asked him stop talking about it and said he had been unjustly attacked. All of this escalated and my sister-in-law was shouting at me too and I even drove off with the intention of just going home but then turned back around b/c it felt unfair to my parents to just leave. And ….. .ugh. It just sucked.

      • My Christmas was great. My brother was in Connecticut with his in-laws. =p I love the guy, but nobody else in the whole world pisses me off like he does. I actually thought our relationship had improved a lot the last couple of years, with blow-outs tapering off. But we’ve had two big fights lately and they both have one thing in common… my 6 year old nephew who is the light of my life was not around. I usually play with him a lot during family time and I didn’t realize it before, but I think that serves as a buffer between my brother and me.

        Had an interesting mini-discussion with my father about power and oppression and psychology kind of sparked by the fight. He continues to surprise me with his flexibility of thought and empathy with those totally different from him. He hails from conservative Christian Republican land, although, don’t tell him, but he’s not that conservative nor republican any more. Our relationship has gotten so much better since I came out to my family. When love leads, it takes us to unexpected places.

        I had a Christmas brunch with friends as well as doing family stuff, which was really really great. I have some incredible people in my life, and the food and mimosas were great. :)

  37. Well my sister is organizing her room while her husband & kids are cooking. My mom is knitting a scarf. I’m making amigurumis for my nieces & nephew while watching Bonanza. Also, I’m the only one ready for church. Which is odd.

    Happy holigay to you all! =^^=

    p.s if anyone is bored/need a distraction/holigay pal say ‘hi!’ on twitter.

  38. I spent most of Giftmas Eve crying, having a panic attack, and not sleeping. I’ve been seeing a therapist who is amazing (poly-, queer- and genderqueer-friendly!) but things aren’t getting better. As soon as my doctor’s surgery is open after the holigays, I’m talking to my doctor about going on medication. Here’s hoping next Giftmas I’ll be feeling much better. After so many years of feeling like shit, it would be amazing.

    By the way, thank you Autostraddle. This thread has always meant a lot to me, but this year it’s meant even more. I really really appreciate that I can share this and already feel a little bit better. <3

  39. my partner and i are stuck at disneyland with her family and it is all princesses and capitalist gendered mayhem. IF THEY ARE ANY OTHER STRADDLERS HERE PLEASE LET ME KNOW. we can sneak out and be salty queers together.

  40. I’m Jewish, live in Sweden aka the most Christmassy of all the countries, celebrating alone with my girlfriend without our families but am in love with someone else (secretly), keep checking obsessively their twitter & instagram feeds, feeling stupid and alone, augh. Angsty Christmakwanakah!

  43. S.O. decided last night to start an argument about our future and our life plans and now we have to go to my family’s for Christmas lunch and try not to be awkward.

  44. Oh god I am so bored. Please, let’s talk some more about the weather and reality tv. I am so invested.

  45. update: the slip i bought is mayyybe a size too small, not sure how i’m going to get it off? and the t-shirt i was going to pretend was a dress definitely shrank in the wash. so what i have left to work with are some black sparkly tight and… that’s about it.

    wish lizz was here.

      • it’s like if a snake swallowed me whole? and the snake was shiny and black and went from my boobs down to the middle of my thighs. it’s the kind of slip that doesn’t want anything to move. ever. i considered pretending it was a skirt for a second and then i just gave up.

        i’m resorting to black jeans SADFACE because i was supposed to wear those tomorrow with the motorcycle sweater i’m getting christmas morning! but it’s ok i’m holding it together.

        now i’m looking at updos on the beauty department and i believe i’ll be going with this one.

  46. As usual the fucked up cycle I like to call “taking-on-loads-of traditional-household-tasks-because-I-want-everything-perfect-then-feel-shitty-because-no-amount-of-perfectly-made-pastry-can-turn-your-family-into-the-people-you-want-them-to-be”.

    Wicked depressing when you discover that you’re still that kid desperately wanting mummy and daddy to be proud of you when really they’ll just be drunk or emotionally distant.

    Oh well, at least as the adult child of an alcoholic, you have seasonal drinking down to a fine art. Sometime self-medication is self-care right?

    • It’s funny how you know what the results will be, but you still keep trying year after year, right? Even if you go in pretending that you’re not going to care this time, you can’t stop the feelings. SO MANY FEELINGS. And yeah, maybe lubricate those feelings with a drink or two. Survival at all costs.

      Come on, lady. You got this.

      • Aww! Thanks for the vote of confidence. I do got this!! I’m going on a charity walk thing in the morning (nothing crazy, just a mile) so that’ll be a good mental health break out of the house for an hour. Plus it breaks the pattern of a lifetime in terms of what we do on Christmas morning. Hurray for disrupting patterns.

  48. Breaking in my YDY flask tonight to get through midnight mass like the heathen I am. Thanks Autostraddle!

  49. This is going to be the worst Xmas.
    My father left my mother in April. She’s been trying to get him back since. My sister and I want nothing to do with him since he left her for his mistress and my mother hurt herself the weekend he admitted it. He and his mistress both live in a different country to us.
    Last week my mother fainted after an allergic reaction and incurred a concussion. She’s miserable. Depressed and injured do not a good time make.
    We live in a different country to all our family. So it’s me and my mother (who live together) and my younger sister and her boyfriend (who live a few houses down the road).
    So it’s going to be shit. And that’s not even including the fact I haven’t come out at the age of 27.

    • Ahhhh that sounds really rough. The first Christmas after parents break up Is The Worst (hear it in Tiny Pineapple’s voice). One thing we did that helped is we used it to change up our Christmas traditions — start a fun new one that’s meaningful to you, or retire one that always grated. I hope you and your mom and sis find some peace and 2014 brings all good things.

    • I’m sorry things have been so rough this year, but I hope your mother will be strong. Try to have a great Christmas with your mom, your sis, and her bf.
      And about the coming out thing – you have all the time in the world! If now isn’t the right moment with the family drama, it’s ok. <3

    • Thanks for this, you guys. It’s actually lovely to have this support. I really appreciate it and hope you’ve all had brilliant Christmasses.

  50. I moved to a new apartment today after having lived with my ex for a month post-breakup. Spent the day unpacking and setting up a cozy reading nook in my room, which I am now curled up in, drinking a cup of coffee. I’m Jewish so I don’t do the Christmas thing, but all of my friends left town for the holidays, and I feel pretty lonely… I think my ex might also be spending Christmas alone and I’m considering asking her if she wants to hang out but NO I SHOULD NOT DO THAT because the breakup was rough and we are not exactly on good terms with each other and as of today I’m finally out of that situation, so I just should not go there, bad idea. But the feelings, they are mixed. I’ll probably spend the evening trying to distract myself with cookies/movies/thinking about my trip home after new year’s that I have to look forward to, and about the Autostraddle merch I ordered that should be arriving any day now!

    • cookies are good distractions. they’re like little edible security blankies. at least, that’s what i learned in college.

  51. Happy holigay, AutoStraddlers!

    I’m at home with my S.O. and thinking I need to divorce him. I am starting to think I’m not bi, but a lesbian. His parents come into town Thirsday and they are driving me insane. And the thought of paying him maintenance if we divorce makes me angry. I start seeing my new therapist after the new year. I’m mainly a lurker, but I’m glad y’all are here!

  52. This is a time that is SO SCARE for the teen queers. Because let me tell you, if someone assumes my bestie is my boyfriend one more time, I swear I will screech Christmas carols like a harpy until the relatives all go home. Tips/tricks/advice/companionable sympathetic misery, anyone?

  53. i hope i’m not an ass for posting twice, & i hope i don’t sound like all i want is attention, but if anyone is up for hugs i could totally use some hugs right now

    2013’s been a rough year; all i want by this point is for my birthday to be okay. today i tried so hard to not slide into the usual thoughts & feelings & i failed so badly. i’m sorry, i’m so dumb haha

  54. I am with my family and I had the audacity to talk about how catholix school was not fun and that led into a discussion of how dare I be so ungrateful and then another rendition of the “my house my rules” lecture. I am now drinking my beer silently and checking twitter and thinking my current plans for moving out in 2014 are definitely the right idea. I might have to put college on hold for a bit but better than staying, I fear for my mental health if I do.

    • oh, god. do i ever know the accusations of being “ungrateful” (jfc) & of the whole “my house my rules”. offering hugs if you need/want them. i hope you’re able to move out this coming year. <3

      • I’m going out of town to volunteer for a week or so and then I’m staying with a friend in the city and I’m hoping I can find a job. at this point I’ll take anything.

        • : ((( i know that feeling. i have a minimum wage job (though i just got a raise), so it’s not enough to move out on, but it’s something. though then my father keeps saying how i need a full-time job with benefits. it’s like nothing pleases them most times.

          i really hope you find something good asap. fingers crossed for you!

    • ugh “ungrateful” accusations are the worst sort of emotional blackmail. Hang in there, take care of yourself.

  55. I’m sitting alone on Christmas Eve, sick and watching a Northern Exposure marathon with my pup. My girlfriend is home visiting her family while I have to work tomorrow, on Christmas Day. Feeling lonely tonight.

  56. The Tenth Circuit denied Utah’s request for a stay on the gay marriage ruling! Merry Christmas!

  57. Merry holigays! I am currently staying/working on a beautiful farm and vineyard in New Zealand, where I live with 4 other backpackers, and it is the first time I’ve been away for home for Christmas. Halloween is forever my favorite holiday, and I usually roll my eyes at Christmas songs and such, but I am really missing cooking with my brother and sister and drinking all of the cider and mulled wine. And I am sad that I didn’t get to go see the Hobbit with my sister. Also, I am feeling very sad that the couple I really liked here at the farm are leaving earlier than they had planned – we were vegetarian weirdos together. I like this place, and everyone is nice, but honestly, it is cishet central, and I have been living in a bit of a queer/feminist bubble the last few months. and it is hard. I am trying to figure out whether to out myself to these people, but I’m kind of scared of how they might react. I don’t think anyone would be mean to me, but I can definitely see people talking about me behind my back, just because there have been a few odd comments about gay people that made me uncomfortable. POOOP. At least there is an awesome pig here.

  59. its funny but i remember as a kid in kenya i felt like i was being cheated out of christmas, i felt like it was pretend. all photos and songs of santa were of him in snow, jack frost, freezing temperatures and such things. There is no bloody snow in nyahururu kenya(were my grandparents are from). Now that i’m DC bundled up, it feels…..real? Like the photos in my head match the sting in my cheeks from a stiff cold wind. I have my parents and sister with me so i do have family with me. BUt of course i’m not happy cause who the hell likes snow and feeling cold!……anyway merry xmass autostraddle, and all you little queers out there!!!!

    • I am feeling very annoyed because USUALLY there is snow of a kind around Christmastime at home, but this year, NOTHING. And of course, once I came home to Northern California, it snowed quite prettily in Seattle. OF COURSE. GRRRRR. I WANT SNOW.

      • lol, my aunt recently moved to Seattle and positively hates it. She can’t stand that its always raining and the best she can hope for is a gray day, i should call her cause i’m sure she’s beside herself with glee that it snowed lol. Hope you get the chance to dive into some snow, at least before new years!

        • Haha yeah definitely call her, I’m sure she’s thrilled! I hope I can jump in some snow too. Fingers crossed! :P

    • Oh man, I know how this goes!! Actually, this was the first year I didn’t get some scented lotion or girly perfume, which is nice. Ignore the hints and ‘you do you,’ Charlie!

    • It’s a joy huh! Granny told my gf and I that we look “better” now we have longer hair… basically we can’t afford haircuts…fighting the urge to shave it off to spite her…too cold for that.

  61. Yesterday my grandma moved in with my parents, and it’s been an adjustment. She’s still recovering from a rather debilitating stroke and fall, so she needs a lot of care, and there’s also the fact that I never came out to her, which never seemed to matter before, but now I’m realising that every time I come home, she’ll be here, and it’s something I’ll always be aware of, and it kind of sucks because I don’t want to have to censor myself at home. And the thing is, she may not even know what I’m talking about, or even care, but it just makes me feel a little weird. Not a very big problem in the scheme of things though, I know.

    Mostly I just feel a little useless, sitting around on the sidelines while my sister and mother do all the cooking and my sister occasionally shoots little barbs at me for not helping, even though she doesn’t really want me to either. Yay.

    Also I’m feeling vaguely terrified at all the work I haven’t done for my thesis over winter break so far. :/

    • If your sister starts being bitchy about not helping, sweetly ask, “What would you like me to work on?” That’ll throw her off her game. :)

      • Haha I’ve done that before and usually what happens is she finds something for me and then criticizes how I’m doing it the entire time. Woohoo. :P But all in all, I survived and things went fine.

  62. Ok you guys. My 28 year old cousin who sent me a letter disowning me after I came out is here, and you guys, I can’t stress how gay she is. So gay. Gayer than Nathan Lane in a cameo. I know stereotypes are wrong and all, but you guys. YOU GUYS. I’ve always suspected that she was, but seeing her today just confirmed it in my head. So even though she’s a complete douche I feel a little bit of pity for her obvious internalized homophobia. I guess.
    Anybody dealt with this?

    • Ooooof that is intense. I suppose it’s also possible that she’s homophobic because she’s been perceived as gay, even if she’s not? But either way… it’s probably personal. I’ve never dealt with this directly, but I’ve been in some similar situations where people have been harsh with me about sexuality-related things because they were not comfortable with them, themselves. I tend to think that, sure, you can be understanding of their issues to an extent, but it’s not your job to help them, particularly if they’re hurting you.

  63. ugh i love this thread.

    like a lot of other people here, i’m having an exceptionally weird year too. i’m a musician and had to stay in town for a gig today instead of flying home before christmas eve, which means i’m flying out tomorrow at 5am to be with my family.
    wasn’t planning on coming home at all, but then a bunch of stuff went down, including my grandma dying this week (we all knew it was coming, but it still has been really rough for my mom).

    so i’ll be really happy to give my mom a hug/ be there for her, but she also is just one of those people who makes it really hard to support her by responding to difficult feelings by becoming super controlling and leveling the most hurtful comments she can come up with at everyone around her, so i get the added joy of dealing with that while playing moderator between her and the rest of my family.
    meanwhile, my brother has been experiencing really horrible depression, making him less able than usual to handle my mom, and her extremely hurt that he’s seemed so callous and distant, so there’s that.

    but all said, even though it’s going to be hard, i’m really glad i’m going to get to see my whole family and that i’m in a place where i’m kind of able to try to help everyone out and hold them together instead of being part of the mess needing the holding. i guess living half a country away most of the year has its perks.

    until then, i’m sitting in my empty apartment all alone since my girlfriend left to visit her parents this morning and it’s SO WEIRD and it’s making me all over-emotional and full of SO MANY FEELINGS.

    • I’m pro-taking-books-to-bars, personally. You do you! Hope you stay warm and are able to do something enjoyable :)

  65. I worked today, and I have work tomorrow. Tonight, my friend and I had our third annual Thai food & cookies. Tomorrow night after work, Chinese food with my sister. Right now, N*SYNC’s Christmas album.

    Chanukah was so long ago, and “the holidays” feel weird having celebrated almost a month ago.

  66. So, Christmas eve started with my little brother telling us that last year he got his girlfriend pregnant (they were both 19 at the time) and she had a miscarriage, and I guess he told my Dad a few months ago. My mom was so angry that my Dad knew before her that she kicked us all out of her house and told us she wasn’t coming over for Christmas Day.

    Then when we got back to my Dad’s, my sister and brother decided that since Christmas was already ruined, they would tell me that back in April my mom (in an angry rant) told them that my Dad had a year and a half long affair with my favorite elementary school teacher (I had her for 4-6th grades) while my brother and I were still in her class. The worst part s last year he told me he never cheated on my mom. Merry Christmas!

  67. While my twinster & I were cooking she randomly broke out in song & dance
    “what did the lezzie say? le, le, le, le, le, leeeeeez, le, le, le, le, le, leeeeez. what did the lezzie say?”

    And I thought this Christmas would be a little boring. lol!

  68. I think my sister bought me a strap on for Christmas.
    She mentioned that you have to be over 18 to buy my gift and that my niece couldn’t go with her. So I said ‘is it a strapon? What is it?’ Then I proceeded to shake it while my sister and teenage niece laughed and my mom said ‘that’s enough, allyson’
    Ah. Family dysfunction.

  69. After reading through all of your holiday experiences, I feel a hell of a lot better, I must admit. I’ve been stranded in my midwest hometown for only a couple of days now, and I’m already going crazy what with my family’s constant ignorant comments (sexist, racist, homophobic, etc.) and normal intolerant behaviour. I really don’t know how I survived 18 years here!

    The worst part though is that my family remains extremely religious (Christian), and have no idea that I renounced my faith a couple of years ago. My godmother sprung her new “calling from god” on me as well, which happens to be witnessing at the local strip club since *everyone* knows that exotic dancers are pathetic, unfulfilled, generally effed up people…yeah, I also forgot to mention to her that I’ve been dancing as a stripper for the past 8 months–holy moly, what even?! I mean, can anyone agree with me that that is a messed up coincidence?!

    I guess that means a free lapdance for her Christmas present is off the table…
    Oh well!

  70. This christmas has been kind of rough. My grandma who I am very close to has ceased her cancer treatment and isn’t expected to last longer than the week. I’ve been helping to take care of her and the whole process has been really sad and scary, today especially so. Even if I’m a grown ass woman and should have gotten over it probably.
    On the other hand, tonight at our family gathering, my fighting uncles reconciled, I got to talk with a smart 15-year-old that loves to read and is going to take over the world one day, one cousin made me a photoshopped screencap of bill o’reilly saying that I personally ruined christmas (best gift ever), and another cousin kept doing his nic cage impression. So I think we’re going to be okay maybe.

  71. Happy holigays!! This is the 5th year my wife and I have spent the holidays apart. We’ve been together 5 years. Yup, we’ve never had the chance to spend the holidays together. Anyway, my Christmas started around 8am PST because it was dec 24 midnight where she is. She and I were really busy this week, I had work when she was kinda not busy cooking and preparing stuff and I’d be off on the days she needed to totally be in the kitchen the whole time! The whole time difference thing is always such a drag, my body clock is totally messed up LOL.

    I had work yesterday and today so I’m tired and I kinda conked out earlier. I woke up to my mom almost going to bed without celebrating Christmas eve. I was like OMG. THANK GOD I SET MY ALARM. I almost had Christmas eve alone -___- LOL.

    There’s a lot of family stuff going on tomorrow. Bow tie time!!!!!

    Thanks for making this thread Laneia. It’s like a journal entries we can all share and have feelings on.

    PS where is TINY PINEAPPLE!

  72. This is my third consecutive Christmas without my family, and I miss my sisters so much right now.

    Thanks for giving me a space put that.
    It’s too heavy inside my brain.

    Happy Holidays:)

  73. Oh man, this thread is definitely making me feel better. I came back to my parents’ house this past weekend and for Christmas Eve/Christmas. Some highlights from my mom thus far:

    – adamantly insisting that the LGBT community “isn’t actually that big, they’re just really loud and in your face” and making plenty of homophobic comments (of course, the ironic thing is that both her daughters are bisexual, but she doesn’t know that)
    – making disparaging/victim-blaming comments about a case of relationship abuse (“she must have done something to instigate it”/”We don’t know, it might have been mutual” are some direct quotes), which set off all sorts of unhappy triggers about my abusive ex (which, again, she doesn’t know about)
    – four different conversations on how Christians are being oppressed in the U.S.
    – approximately three temper tantrums over how her family doesn’t bend to her will enough

    This has been accompanied by heavy doses of classism, racism, Islamophobia, and so much internalized misogyny that it shocks me that she’s still capable of functioning. Red wine got me through Christmas Eve, but I’m not sure how Christmas morning is going to go. Trying to resist the urge to just walk out by reminding myself that I won’t have to come home for many months after this.

    Sorry for the rant, it’s just been tough. The holidays have never been spectacular, but she’s been even more hateful than usual this year. I guess I’ll just lurk on this thread until I get to leave. <3

  74. I feel like if you’re going to designate the lesbian in the family as the driver for all intoxicated parties, you should also forbid all family members from discussing the homosexual agenda.

    I’m just sayin. It’s only fair.

  75. First off, thank you Autostraddle for continually being an awesome/amazing/endlessly friendly place where I feel that I fit when the rest of the world sometimes doesn’t offer that place. Y’ALL ROCK!(Oh geez, it’s only Xmas morning here and I’m already breaking out the Irish coffee induced “y’all”s).

    Secondly, here’s a hug to anyone not having an optimal, or even an entirely shit Christmas/Holiday season this year. Or a high five/fist bump if you’re not the hugging type. Hang in there, let’s hope 2014 will be better.

    So on a personal note, this Christmas couldn’t possibly get any weirder than last year’s – which involved half the family being drunk and the other half being Muslim. Highlight was definitely when my highly intoxicated mother decided it was a good idea to announce that one of my cousins had gotten (secretly) married. Something everyone knew, except for her dad, obviously sat next to my mother during her drunken rant. *AWKWARDNESS LEVELS DANGEROUSLY HIGH*

    This year’s looking up. My mutti’s home from Iraq, and we’ve managed not to strangle one another yet. Only downside is that I dislocated my shoulder last week, so can’t actively continue my terrible Christmas tradition of covering cringe-worthy songs on the uke. Aaaaaand soon I’ll be off to Dublin for new-year’s, to pal around with friends, make lots of music, and drink lots of beer.

    Merry Whatever-You’re-Doing-Right-Now-Y’all!

  76. So my mom has worked out a schedule in which we’ll have a proper dinner today AND watch the Christmas specials of Call the Midwife and Doctor Who, which for some mysterious reason includes not eating between breakfast and four in the afternoon. My dad is out all the time to be part of the music in various Christmas masses in various churches and I have to write papers for grad school, which is pretty much like every other winter break.

    Except my best friend who lives across the country may be breaking up with his girlfriend soon and I can’t be there to support him and my mom keeps asking when I’m getting back with my ex-girlfriend, and I can’t get my folks to understand that she’s not going to chance her mind and I also don’t want her to and we’re trying to get through the break-up with the friendship intact. And my eighteen-year-old cousin just joined the Salvation Army which is apparently a good thing? So we’ve already had three awkward dinner conversations about the Salvation Army since I arrived.

    (And I signed up for Autostraddle a few weeks ago after years of lurking, because I want to consensually hug all of you!)

  77. Advantages of solo Christmas in Spain instead of Christmas in the UK: lovely sunny weather in my city today, so I just spend a couple of hours at the beach, reading my Kindle and eating gingerbread people and generally frolicking – because I’m a grown up and I have no arbitrary traditions to adhere to here and I can jolly well do whatever I want!

  79. Greetings, autostraddlers.
    I’m spending the holiday in Manhattan, sleeping in a loft with my older brother and my father. Neither of which are aware that I’m seeing a lovely lady named Beth. But I kept subtly name dropping her while we were Christmas shopping yesterday. I wonder is the suspicions are brewing… Both are pretty traditional, so I’ve had to keep the queer levels at a minimum. I assert myself silently with my flannel and leather jacket. Considering coming out to my brother, but so far it stops at consideration. Overall, though, I’m glad to be spending the holiday in the city and I’ll definitely be venturing off by myself while I’m here to find some solace somewhere in the homogay community.

    Let me know if any of you know of any places that are an absolute must. Will be here in New Yawk for the next week, so I’ve got time. I wish you the merriest and happiest holigays, homogays. You guys are awesome.

  80. I awoke on Christmas morning at 5 with a stomach ache, so I’ve been reading this thread to pass the time while I wait for my family to wake up. Said stomach ache has put me in kind of a sour mood about the day of excess ahead of me, but I’m just being a grump. (Also I miss my girlfriend because this winter break is the longest I’ve been away from her since we started dating. I’m a baby.)
    Seriously though I’ve spent most of the break reflecting on this amazing year. I mean. This time last year I’d just finished my first & worst semester of college, which ended in a lot of anxiety attacks & also the realization that I was probably a big queer. And then in January I started seeing a therapist and I started feeling better than I had in a long time. So many good things happened this year: I kissed my first girl, I finally got a job at school, I started being not-depressed, I fell in love for the first time… My family & friends have been just excellent and I’m so glad to have them. And the realization that things could have gone pretty bad and they didn’t–I also came out to my parents this year and I know how scary that can be for so many queers, but my parents have been great, and even though I’m going to school in Bible Belt (far away from my home base in Chicago–listen, it was a really good scholarship and I was really, really in denial) I’ve met a lot of great people and honestly I’ve felt really safe there. (Ah, the virtues of living in a red state’s one college town.)
    Anyway I am a BIG SAP but this was definitely the best year of my life and I just wanted to pass on the positive vibes to you all. HUGS to everyone, you can get through this!

  81. Got festively wasted before 11:30am and successfully initiated a lengthy conversation about Mooncups with my extended family over lunch. My uncle thought it was what astronaughts drink coffee from in space. Merry chrimbus!

  82. It’s my first Christmas away from my Catholic family and tropical home. So yes, it does feel a bit like a “real” Christmas here in England and what’s more it’s the first year I’m out to myself. Also my first year without Mass, though I did lie that I went – baby steps…I just finished Skyping with the extended family back home and they are totes happy that I’ve worn a dress for the first time in years (but they don’t know it’s for girls NOT BOYS hahaha) and for some reason, they dialled down on the homophobia and religious rants this year. Do they know? Or trying to keep the holidays cordial? It’s hard to explain how I meet/ hang out with a group of girls without mentioning the fact they’re gay and the parents have definitely picked up on that but not asked any probing questions. Like at all. But they are still quite stiff that when I mentioned clubbing, there was this awkward silence. Or I could blame Skype :)

    Either way, my grandma noticed that I seemed more relaxed and fresh (wouldn’t she love to know why) and yes being out does that to you and was actually quite complimentary this year. So am enjoying Christmas home alone (all the roomies are gone) with Love Actually, Imagine Me & You, and Rent.

    My dad wants to Skype again in three days. This is an unprecedented. He’s asked me if I’m gay at least three times over the past few years. Half of me wants him to ask me why all my stories only feature girls, the other half is thinking of ignoring his video call. Agh agh AGH.

      • Oh yes thanks. Though update: he said he has something ‘pivotal’ to share. Such a fancy word :O

        Enjoy the lesbian sex dice~

  84. You GUYZ! This was basically the best Christmas evar. My dad gave me a whole flippin tool box full of amazing things and a POWER DRILL and he voluntarily asked me about my girlfriend three times. And my aunt who feels guilty about being in a fight with my dad gave me money to buy my parents fancy whiskey, which is delicious. And I spooned with my parents’ labrador. Power tools, whiskey, puppy cuddles, how could it get any better? Oh yeah, my girlfriend is arriving in three days and we haven’t seen each other since August, eeeeeee! I’m currently meowing Christmas carols to her over skype, so life is pretty great.

    Sending much love to all of you who are dealing with less-than-ideal situations today!

      • Thank you! tbh this fall was pretty hard because I moved away from my girlfriend and friends I love and a place I loved living and a job that was pretty great to be closer to my family. The move was really rough and on top of that grad school hit me like a ton of bricks, but it’s been great to spend more time with my parents and work on our relationship. Sorry to dump all my feels on you but the warm fuzzies this holiday are making me feel like the effort was worth it and I feel really lucky.

        • n’awww, don’t worry about feelings dump! have you seen my comments on this post? hehehe

          i’m glad it’s such a good day for you, then, & that you feel so lucky. :D /hugs if you want them

  85. This Christmas is very complicated for me. My family was fairly homophobic, using religion as their reason, and made me depressed for years because I was so confused about being gay but thinking I couldn’t be gay. So I didn’t really feel like celebrating a religious holiday this year, but my mom called me and kept pressuring me to attend church. Awkward.

    Also, trying to find the courage to come out to my family this holiday season. My mom will probably be the most accepting, but even she lowers her voice when she says the word “gay”, barely mentioned the existence of gay people when I was a kid, and sounds uncertain when she says she *thinks* it might be okay for gay people to have relationships. As for the rest of my family, I’m expecting shocked/horrified silence or lots of anger towards me. Maybe suggestions that I get therapy or something as well…

    I hope I can follow through and actually come out to my family this year, because I’m tired of them not knowing. I’d rather know for sure how they’ll react instead of feeling distant from them because of how I think they’ll react.

  86. so not only is today going really well so far

    but just past midnight before i was gonna shut my computer down, i looked in my junk mail & saw that a friend who i hadn’t heard from in a year had messaged me. like, i couldn’t find her anywhere online & was terrified something had happened to her.

    and shE MESSAGED ME TO SAY MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY BIRTHDAY

    & I COULD BARELY TYPE & MY EYES TEARED UP AND I ALMOST CRIED BC I WAS SO HAPPY & RELIEVED

    :’))))))) a bloo bloo bloo i’m just still so glad she’s okay.

  87. Hanging out on the couch swapping favorite webcomics with my dad, who is one of the most intelligent and well-read feminists I know. Homophobic grandma is currently meditating by the pond so we have a moment’s respite from awkward. We decided that this year’s Christmas would be about spending time and not money, so everyone bought each other chocolate instead. Strange mix of passive-aggressive squabbling and best-friend behavior between various family members. There are cats everywhere. I’m so confused.

  88. One of my friends bought me autostraddle boxers for Christmas and therefore I love her forever and ever? That’s all I have to say. They’re the first pair of boxers I’ve ever owned that were mine-all-mine and not stolen from a partner. I’m so happy I could dance!

  89. Merry Christmas! I am alone with my dog in my apartment, but she is wearing plush antlers and the best holiday sweater and I got boxers with skiing penguins with santa hats. This is the first holiday without my family and they skyped me for about ten weird minutes, but the babies were cute and my Mom was nice. I hope you all have wonderful holidays. Thank you, Geneva for our gifts!!

  91. I love dogs in plush antlers. I wanted to give you a picture of my lab wearing antlers, but she wouldn’t hold still long enough for me to take a picture.
    In other news, I received an Elsa plush from my mother (I’m so in love with her/Frozen), and my dog keeps trying to snag it from me.

  92. I love reading the comments here, it helps sooo much!

    I thought about coming out to my mother while I am home from school, but she’s always angry and we never have real conversations anyway, so I don’t think she deserves to know this about me, you know what I mean? Also she got fired from her job a few months ago so I don’t want to be the one to be blamed for causing her more stress.

    So, in a few hours I’m going to eat dinner at my also-gay-best-friends house with his parents. Neither of us are out to our parents, but it really helps that we can hang out together tonight.

  93. My parents gave up on luring me and my sister back to rural Indiana, so they flew us out to Vegas for Christmas/Kwanzaa. It’s noon and I’m on my second drink. Merry Christmas and a happy Kwanzaa eve to all!

  94. Merry Christmas from a lurker. I’m at home with my family, which is lovely (sitting around in pajamas by the fire with food and libations aplenty). Meanwhile my girlfriend is a state away with her hateful fundamentalist family (the “I won’t let Satan have you” types), who she came out to a week and a half ago. It’s been terrible beyond all imagining.

  95. My mother got me a pair of Burgundy colored chucks as an x-mas gift. I struggled trying to find them a few weeks back myself because they didn’t have them anywhere in my size – Went to 5 different shoe stores (damn my small feet!) So when she handed me the present, I knew what it was and she also put in a few bucks in the box, which I tried to return and I tried really hard not to cry and now I want to because damn these feelings.

    It really is the little things.

  96. this is the first time i’ve been able to spend time on the internet in like 3 days because my dad finally left the house to go to the gym but GOLLY GEE i missed all of you so much! so far the craziest thing my dad has done was trick the whole family into watching “the nativity story” on DVD, which isn’t that bad. it is t minus four hours until my brother gets into town and i meet his new girlfriend for the first time. WILL KEEP YOU ALL UPDATED. stay warm & take care of yourselves!

  98. I came out to my parents earlier this year, which my mom took okay and my dad took rather poorly. I’ve never been very feminine, but this is the first time my parents have been able to link that with my sexuality. Which has resulted in my mom jokingly giving me a pair of her old heels with a gift card to an athletic shoe store attached to the bottom. Also, my dad gave me his accidentally-shrunken wool plaid button up, which I’ve been wearing proudly. He’s been referring to me as the “lumberjack” and we just finished off a growler of craft beer together. Not a bad Christmas I’d say.

  99. Merry Christmas, everyone.

    Started at 5:30, called the paramedics because my mother had a fall that turned out to be harmless. Awkward ex-brother in law visit, the cousin who I will not do five years worth of free legal work for is bitching about the shortage of ice and sniffing about my uncreative choices in food, my sister is annoyed with my mother, my aunt has the flu, and my distant relatives gave me the stink eye when I said I couldn’t make it to the movies later, probably correctly attributing it to my gay shit. And yes, one of them complained that I keep too much beer in the refrigerator.

    And I’m in a room alone typing alone to you guys.

    So yes, everything is about where it should be…

  100. I hate Christmas this year. All alone in a house that isn’t mine, in between all the crying I have been drinking mass amounts of wine and eating chocolate which I don’t even like just because I am hoping I throw it all up :(

  101. Things That Have Happened To/Around Me This Christmas:

    – I traveled from my home in Southwest MO to Jonesboro, AR to spend Christmas with my dad.
    – Dad, stepmom, and I went to a brilliant little restaurant owned by a lesbian and there were a few visibly queer people there and I freaked out a little internally because VISIBLY QUEER PEOPLE I DON’T KNOW THAT NEVER HAPPENS IN MY SMALL TOWN
    – I pondered how or whether to bring up my partner to to my dad, since telling that story or the truth about how long we’ve been together involves coming out as poly
    – Dad gave me jewelry that is simple and looks good with collared shirts
    – Stepmom’s family was mostly in Memphis, so we went on a trip-within-a-trip and stayed in an ohmygosh superfancy dadifyoucanaffordthiswhyhaveyoubeenstingyaboutchildsupport hotel suite.
    – Stepmom family drama all over the place
    – I got to vent to Dad about the shit Mom’s put me through
    – Dad taught little underaged me things about wine in the hotel room
    – I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the high amounts of socioeconomic stratification in Memphis and my Dad’s shitty callous attitude towards it.
    – I realized I have no idea how the hell rich, or even upper-middle-class people, work
    – I got to talk to/eat dinner with my awesome 93-year-old grandpa

    Currently I am being extremely glad switched the channel from a Rush Limbaugh interview to HGTV and realizing that, holy shit, I’m staying here through the end of the week and should I be more scared than I am?

    It’s fun most of the time, but gosh, I am a nervous little queer kid this holiday season.

  102. After my first Christmas out to the immediate family, and the only atheist in the bunch, I am just happy that my holiday is over and I’m back to my own space. I have no wine and only one beer, which is a real shame. How do you all decompress after such engagements?

    • Usually I watch a thing while in the middle of a blanket pile, preferably with some form of chocolate on hand. It works especially well if you’re watching something that reaffirms your identity as a legitimate thing, but it doesn’t have to do so explicitly.

  103. This was the second Christmas since I stopped talking to my parents. Everyone assumes it’s because I’m gay and they’re homophobic, and sometimes I let people think this because it’s easier to understand than the truth. They actually subjected me to all sorts of intense, bizarre abuse that took me years to acknowledge or even remember. This year, I spent the holiday with my uncle and his kids, and it was nice but still a bit sad. My uncle doesn’t know about what my parents did, and I’m not sure if I should or even can try to talk about it. For tonight, I’ll relax over a rewatch of the OITNB finale.

  104. I’ve never ever in years of watching this site posted a comment but this has been the weirdest Christmas ever.

    -I didn’t put up a Christmas tree this year. Not even a little baby 3-ft celebration tree like the one that lived in my college house for months every year. I got the tree and my ornaments from my Ex two weeks ago but I couldn’t commit to decorating.
    – Christmas Eve included microwavable Mac-N-Cheese just like Kevin McCallister in ‘Home Alone’. I totally got to eat mine tho.
    – Last Christmas I had a kid (the best step-kid ever) and it all made so much more sense. I was on pins and needles waiting for the morning. (A favorite picture of her I love is her opening an umbrella on mom’s lap like she’s never seen rain before.) This year I couldn’t make myself get out of bed.
    – In an effort to take care of myself I didn’t make early plans, knowing that the parts of my family I cared to see weren’t getting together until the late afternoon/evening. I took myself to see an early movie and when I got there I realized the first words I’d spoken to a person today were, “One for…”
    – My baby-brother/roommate (one in the same) left me to drive myself to Christmas because he got off work early and my movie wasn’t finished (he offered to pay for my gas but I feel like he missed the point).
    – My ex-step-daughters other mom got engaged to her GF today.(She’s not anyone I have ever been particularly close to (and not my Ex- [I live a beautifully complex life as late], but my Ex-GF and I were supposedly the stable side of the family). It’s amazing how suddenly life changes.
    – Last year there were 22 people at Christmas Dinner (I’ve always imagined the house was built around the table [which is located in the basement with the kitchen] where we feast on heated canned vegetables, it’s some kind of crazy antique from my grandfather’s childhood in India, I can’t explain except that is it’s massive, beautiful, and never leaving) and this year there were 9.
    – We ate dinner in silence. It was weird.

    I ended up leaving at the first chance I found. I came home to drink beer and watched Saved! (a personal favorite).

    My birthday is next week. Happy fucking New Year!

  105. I just got home from spending 4 days with my family where I spent too much time wishing that I smoked so that I would have an excuse to leave the house whenever the kids’ wrestling/screaming/crying and sister/brother-in-law bickering got to be too much. It’s blessed quiet here.

  106. This year didn’t really feel very Christmasy for me. It was the first Christmas in two years that my mom wasn’t either leaving a hospital or going to one and I think we were all a little afraid of jinxing things. So it was a pretty small family dinner and Doctor Who marathon for us.

    Things do feel kind of weird sometimes because even though my mother and I are extremely close I haven’t come out to her yet. For years she’s told me that if I am gay she wants me to stay in the closet because she doesn’t want to know. She “can’t handle that”. I came out to my brother months ago and while he seemed fine at the time he’s become increasingly less so. Maybe it’s finally sunk in?

  107. This Christmas was not too bad. I got some really cute gifts from my brothers, even if my mom gave me a lot of boxy sweaters that don’t fit me and gave my sister a lot of cute, formfitting sweaters… It made me wonder if it was because she knows I’m gay now, but I don’t know. It was kind of disheartening to think she didn’t really know what I like. But tomorrow’s my birthday, turning 26 on the 26th! So who knows what might happen??? :P

  108. So my aunt and uncle gave me a gift-basket type thing which included a knit hat (I think some lady who goes to church with my aunt makes them and sells them) that’s got a rainbow pattern — I really like it … but I have no idea if my aunt/extended family knows I’m gay?
    My mom knows but I don’t know if she mentioned it to my aunt, and I haven’t brought it up (there’s been no reason too).

    Reading some of these comments, my family seems surprisingly normal compared to some. There hasn’t been any weird drama, awkwardness, or fights over the holidays since 2007.

  109. Christmas day started off with laughing hysterically, when my sister called. She was cooking her first Christmas dinner for her, her husband and the babies. She was roasting a boned and rolled turkey and also making a ham, which you boil the night before. So she calls and says “what would happen if, for some reason I made a mistake last night and actually boiled the turkey?” The moral of the story: with enough gravy most things are still pretty delicious. And with the right attitude, most disasters are hilarious- provided your mother-in-law never finds out.

  110. After flying across the country, I managed to socialize with my family for two hours before I had to go find somewhere quiet to hide.

    Also, the 2.5 year old nephew that I’ve only seen like twice before decided to take a liking to me and was following me everywhere before I hid.

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