Musings on the Holidays

Recently, I haven't written as regularly in my blog as regularly as I intended. That's partly due to work keeping me busy and partly due to pure laziness. Writing a blog with consistency takes discipline, which I don't always have. Writing an interesting blog takes either an incredible amount of conceit (in other words, being in love with the sound of one's own voice) or a "damn the torpedoes" mentality to compel the writer to write regardless of what others think about it. While I admit to both "flaws" from time to time, I don't have either attitude as often as I need it to succeed as a writer. Hence, the frequent breaks in my blogging, which usually coincide with a sense of "all my writing is pure crap." Ah, the vagaries of the creative personality.

Enough navel-gazing. We're currently in the midst of the holiday season and all its joys and stresses. I like the holidays because they're full of good memories from the past, as well as good food and extra time with the love of my life. Some of my favorite memories from the past are school holiday concerts when I was in my high school's chorus, as well as earlier Christmases when I was still little and in love with the spirit of the season. And, each year is a chance to build new memories with Jen.

Holidays in recent years have been good, although I think a number of family and friends might doubt that. Both Jen and I come from families that tend toward what I term as "big productions" at the holidays. That is, both our families do lots of decorating for the holidays, with big trees, fancy little touches throughout the house, large meals, parties, and so forth. In contrast, we don't put up any decorations, really. The one exception is an "Old World Santa" my mother made for us. He looks like the Dutch Sinterklaas and comes with a Zwarte Piet, which Mom crafted in honor of Jen's Dutch ancestry. That duo comes out each year.

As for fancy meals with lots of people, Jen and I tend to shy away from those kinds of holiday parties. That's partly because neither of us is really the "party" type. We don't enjoy being in crowded, noisy rooms full of people. We prefer smaller, quieter gatherings, and we often shun even those to spend time at home. Frankly, my favorite place to be is wherever she is.

One reason we tend to avoid big gatherings is that we can't really relax around other people and be ourselves. Instead, we both feel a need to behave differently when we're around other people, especially if the people around us are mostly straight. When we're around other people, neither of us exhibits those little intimacies that most other couples (whether gay or straight) seem able to display. We don't casually touch one another on the arm or shoulder, not even if we're trying to get one another's attention. You certainly won't see any hugs or quick pecks, even if we're around some of our closest friends. That's probably why so many people assume we're sisters, rather than a couple. We just don't display the kind of connection people expect from a couple, and we don't have many gay or lesbian couples in our lives to socialize with.

If we're around our relatives, It's even harder to tell that we're a couple.The old joke about acting straight is a part of our lives when we visit family. Ironically, we've been out to all of our immediate families for nearly twenty years (ever since coming out together), and yet we still "straighten up" when we're around our parents or siblings. That's probably a holdover from the early years when we were trying to get our families to accept us, and now it's just an old habit we can't change. It does, however, make us hesitant to spend long periods of time around our families since we can't really relax and be ourselves with them. That inability to relax, especially during the already-stressful holiday season, keeps us from braving the travel nightmare that a holiday trip would require.

In reading back over this post, I'm a bit surprised at the direction it took. I certainly don't want anyone to feel bad or to make it sound like we don't enjoy the holidays or our families. We absolutely do enjoy the holiday season and being around family. It's just that our holiday celebrations are usually much quieter and more private than the ones we grew up experiencing. Since moving to New York, we've added a few new traditions, like dinner and a movie on or near Christmas with a friend of mine from graduate school and her husband. We also like checking out the big tree displayed at Rockefeller Center, along with the holiday windows at places like Macy's. And, we've added our own tradition of ordering Boudin's sourdough bread from San Francisco for our Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.

As a couple who chose not to have children, it took us time to figure out what the holidays mean to us and to design celebrations of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's that are meaningful and satisfying. Much of the holiday "spirit" and expectations for holiday activities revolve around young children and family gatherings or big parties of couples, and none of those activities really resonated with us. I think it took us both reaching a sense of being "comfortable in our own skins" (which seemed to coincide with our early thirties) before we really felt like our holiday celebrations gave us what we wanted from them. At least, I know it worked that way for me.

Some of my old friends from childhood are starting to face "empty nests" with their kids in high school and college. I have a feeling they'll soon find a need to change their holiday plans, and I'm interested to see the kinds of celebrations they'll design after their children are grown.