Christmas as a Gay Celebration

January 1999

The holiday season is a time when more than a few of us succumb to a wistful sadness about how difficult it is to be gay or lesbian. To be sure, many, perhaps even most, of us come from families that are not very accepting of homosexuality in general and of our homosexuality in particular. Though to be fair to our families, in some instances we have never given them the chance to deal with it. We have decided for them that our sexuality would be too difficult for them to handle and have chosen to be silent or evasive about this important aspect of ourselves.

Our culture's observance of Christmas places a heavy emphasis upon the family as the appropriate setting in which to spend the holiday. This focus often serves to underscore our alienation from the traditional nuclear pattern. If we choose, we can use the occasion to experience our lives as sad, lonely, frustrated, and incomplete. Indeed, some of us yield to the temptation to do just that.

There are, fortunately, other ways to spend the season. In particular, we might view this as a time of celebration and affirmation as we consider the life and message of the person whose birth we are ostensibly commemorating.

Jesus is hardly a comforting model for those who would uphold the traditional nuclear family as the primary means to personal fulfillment. As far as we know, he defied the conventions of his time by refusing to marry and sire children. Furthermore, he minimized the importance of blood ties when he announced that it was not his family of origin, but rather those who did the will of God who were his mother and brothers.

The disturbing spectacle of the institutional church attempting to appropriate Jesus as some sort of mascot to uphold and sanctify the middle-class American family does not change the fact that Jesus, throughout his life, was cast in the role of outsider. Rejected and despised by the establishment, he challenged and confronted the traditional religious values of his time.

His most scathing denunciations were reserved for the Moral Majority of his day, those self-righteous legalists who attempted to use Scripture as a bludgeon to judge and condemn those they considered their moral inferiors.

The example of Jesus speaks to us directly as gay and lesbian people and to all others the world deems undesirable. The message is simple: God loves and values you for who you are. To trust and believe in that word brings about a transformed, empowered, and redeemed life.

Christmas is a time when we are all invited to celebrate the birth of one who lived and died for all those the world scorns.

If Stonewall taught us the power that comes from challenging external oppression, Christmas can teach us the power and freedom that comes from resisting another more potent form of oppression– oppression that comes from within when we accept and internalize the world's negative judgment upon who we are. Jesus taught us to love ourselves and others. This is the beginning and end of all real liberation. That is why Christmas is one holiday gay and lesbian people might freely, openly, and truly celebrate. **

Pasted from <http://guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=63261792-D4EC-11D3-AD910050DA7E046B>