DECEMBER 23, 1994

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

13

SPEAK OUT

And a merry merry Christmas to you, too

by Beren deMotier

When my wife and I decided to make the big break from normal life to sleep deprivation and have a baby, we weren't thinking of Christmas at the time.

Or rather, she wasn't.

I'm a Christmas person, it's my holiday. I'm one of those people that, as a child, started counting days to Christmas in September. I never stopped.

But now I'm in charge of creating Christmas for someone who will remember these times for the rest of his life and who will measure his childhood by the standards set during the holidays. These may be his most treasured family moments, or the times he tells his

know the rules to successfully break them. If we give them a good grounding in the best of the usual, they can deviate all they want when they're old enough to know how and if they want to.

By the best of the usual, I do mean that there are some holiday traditions we can do without. Like the alcohol. We figure it's okay for toddlers to crawl around under tables, but we draw the line at adults. Our kids don't need to learn the "hunt the bottle" game by the time they're six.

We also like the idea of not having family conflict at holidays. This is novel to some,

I don't know anything about the religious meaning of Christmas that I didn't learn from animated Christmas

friends about when they're playing that popular game, "How cartoons. awful was your family life?" This is a grave responsibility.

Fortunately he won't remember his first Christmas. The first year he was only a month and a half old and not really up to it. In fact, he wasn't up to much except screaming. He had colic from hell. Needless to say Santa heard quite a racket coming down that chimney.

Now, I have to admit, we really go in for the traditional when it comes to holidays. To be perfectly frank, I don't know anything about the religious meaning of Christmas that I didn't learn from animated Christmas cartoons, but that doesn't mean it has to be ameaningless materialistic experience. You can learn a lot from a Christmas special.

The way my wife and I figure it, our son, and our coming edition, will have enough departure from the norm just having two moms. We don't have to go out of our way to be different. We've simply accepted tradition and not tried to fight it, unlike many members of our community practicing neopagan, matriarchal, druidic etc. variations on a theme. I went through a period when I called Christmas "solstice," but I figured, we're Americans, why buck the system. It's kind of like being an artist, I figure, being a well-adjusted adult that is, you've got to

but I think it could be achieved. We're

going to try very

hard not to torture our offspring at gatherings, and hopefully they'll return the favor. This can be done with extended family by being in an-

other country during the holidays, or by planning well ahead and making sure everyone's expectations are somewhat close to reality.

One thing that Christmas does do every year is to make me think how lucky I am. To have a spouse who's a partner in every way, a son who's the joy of our lives and happy and healthy, knock wood another coming soon, good friends and relatives who want us in their lives. It's hard for our parents, just as things in the lives of our children will be hard for us, but they're working at it. This time of year brings to many people sorrows that they will always think of, rejection by family, the loss of friends and comrades, the ones who fell to the side when they made the step out of the closet. To a large percentage of homeless teenagers who are gay and lesbian, often kicked out of their homes, or who left because they couldn't face what they believed would happen when they told the truth, this time of year is a time of desolation. To be happy in what we have is not to forget what could be, or has been for many of us. May we all be with our families, born, adopted or chosen, traditional or as wild as you like, and know love in the new year. That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

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