Christmas

Christmas is a time for pretending.

We pretend that Jesus is the reason for the season.  

Just like pagans who, 

before the Christians stole it,

participated in Saturnalia would give gifts to everyone they were supposed to care about.

We play this game on such a large scale it should come as no surprise that it also plays out in our personal experiences of Christmas.

Even in Dicken's A Christmas Carol the final thing Scrooge has to learn, 

to truly change, 

is that he will die if he does not.  

He will die, Tiny Tim will die, and nobody will care.

Even when Scrooge does the right thing it does not create life, it does not give him children, it does not fix Tiny Tim.  At it's ideal it can only minimize pain.  

Tiny Tim is still a cripple but he's a living cripple instead of a dead one.

Scrooge's change begins with the threat of an afterlife of suffering and ends with the threat of death.

I have always wanted Christmas to be about joy rather than minimizing pain.

I wish Christmas wasn't about fighting pain and death

but about living.

I'd like to find a deep joy in Christmas.  I want to, so much so, that every Christmas I want to have some deep powerful moving life changing conversation with my father.

Every time I try to press the conversation it ends in a fight,

A fight I will never win.

I want him to take my gender seriously.  

I listen to him spout on about the meaning of Christmas as I sit writing and reading on my laptop and I want to create exactly what he is talking about.

I want the profound catharsis that Christmas promises.  

I want to have the fight but at the end

we will reach an understanding.

He will finally understand why I'm taking hormones, why I'm changing my name.

I hope beyond all hope that he will understand me.

I want him to look me in the eyes and say 

"I'm so sorry.  You're a wonderful daughter and I'm so glad to know you."

Teary eyed I will look back and say

"I'm sorry I didn't know the words.  I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner."

Everything healed, everything complete.

Christmas promises made good.

Of course, his expectations come in conflict with that vision.  

For him the narrative is different.

In his mind we'll come together and spend hours sitting around the campfire.

We'll talk about how great our family is.

We'll talk about how smart we all are.

Old memories will be discussed leading to new memories being made.

His dream is simple and picturesque.

My dream is moving and cathartic.

Instead, he'll sign a truce and I'll compromise.

Neither of us will provoke conflict

He will never use any pronouns or gender specific language around me, passively remaining unengaged.

I will not speak about anything that matters to me but I will speak with enthusiasm about the past.

It is all we can offer each other at this time of year.  There will be other days for conversations and fights.  Other days without all the history of Christmas bearing down upon us for that.

For now I will smile and laugh at the past no matter how painful it is to me.

For his part, he will not comment on my life no matter how strange it is to him.

We will do this because it's Christmas.  We will superficially smile.  We will lie to each other about how we feel and, when we can, we will lie to ourselves.

Occasionally we'll both let slip little stabs.  

A line about how his mind, in old age, is slipping.

A line about how back when I was a little boy I used to love this or that.

Only a toe over the line.  

The truce will not be broken because of minor violations.  We'll will do our best to preserve a semblance of peace.

We will do this not because it is painful

but because it is the least painful way we know how to behave.

We will cause each other as little emotional anguish as possible.  

Christmas is a time for pretending we haven't been hurting each other for our entire lives.

On Christmas Day we tell ourselves "All you need is love" 

We smile

And we open another bottle of wine.