Navigating the Holidays: Families of Chance vs. Families of Choice

I have a good friend who dreads the holiday season, saying: “The holidays are upon my a##.” But it’s here anyway with all those upcoming expectations of Norman-Rockwell-print warm, loving, accepting images of Thanksgivings, Hanukkahs, and Christmas celebrations where families gather together to try to recreate all that warmth.

They’re usually laden with consumer goods that buy perfect gatherings along with national myths to “explain” why we’re supposed to be joyful about it all. Yet, the reality is that many are “celebrating” with depression and disappointment. Even suicide rates increase this time of year.

I wonder how many people actually experience the joy they expect, rather than find these to be anniversaries of exhausting, dysfunctional family pasts. It’s no wonder that streaming movies such as “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” “Home for the Holidays,” or even the “Home Alone” series now constitute holiday traditions.

Maybe most of us long for pasts that today’s nostalgia has us believing were ideal even though they might never have fit the picture we carry around inside. As children, we didn’t hear anyone talk openly about the family dynamics that were really taking place back then under all the candles, mistletoe and tinsel.

Still, we’d like the people on whom we used to have to depend for childhood love and nurture to somehow provide those feelings now. And if we’re LGBTQ+, we’d like our families to love and embrace us, our identities, and those we love.

We might use the same excuses given by abused people everywhere for hanging in there with family members now emboldened by MAGA: They don’t really mean it. They really do love me. They said they were sorry and would do better next time. They need me. I can fix things if I just try harder. I’m not sure I can survive without these people who brought me up. They’re the only family I’ve got. I owe them so much. I don’t want to hurt them.

We could feel that we desperately need to fix our families, and that we could do it if we’d do it just right or long enough. We could even feel as if we must change them in order for us to live happy lives.

We might not even be living our lives for ourselves as human beings with the right to do so but trying to do whatever it takes to get their love.

It’s as if we feel the family dysfunctions we never chose are our fault or because of our identities. We take on the responsibility for their homophobia, transphobia, and other bigoted views.

Culturally, we’re awash in rhetoric about the indispensability of the family of origin even if preserving it creates psychologically and physically sick members. We believe it’s so crucial that it may take the death of its children before anyone asks about a family’s health. Far more children die in homes in the U.S. than are killed in our schools.

Like all adult children of any sexual orientation or gender identity, LGBTQ+ people must face the fact that our happiness cannot depend upon our families of origin. If we live as victims of their evaluation of us, we’ll continue to live their lives, not our own.

And parents are supposed to give their children unconditional love and nurturance so that their grown sons and daughters can let their parents go. Parents aren’t supposed to make their grown children feel indebted for life for the job parents, not their children, chose to do.

Giving up those attempts to change our families is difficult but necessary. We need to set our own boundaries for what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior if family members expect to be around us. And if we feel guilty about doing this, we’ll need therapy and supportive groups of realistic peers to find our bearings.

The healthiest families for us might more likely be those we create ourselves, not our families of origin. They include people who love us unconditionally, listen to us closely, and share themselves with us fully. They not only care about us, but they also accept those we love.

LGBTQ+ people have every right to create these families — especially if their families of origin have failed them. That means they have the right to invite whomever they want to join them to celebrate those holidays they choose to celebrate in the manner they choose to do so.

LGBTQ+ people, as everyone, have the right not to act upon the objections that their families of origin raise as families try to bring LGBTQ+ adults back into their family agenda when LGBTQ+ people begin to live their lives on their own terms for themselves.

Those around us might judge this as selfish, but that’s a useless message out of their insecurity and the jealousy that others can be so free from their straitjackets. It is meant to stop anyone from creating their own happiness.

This might be a rejection of what others have labelled “traditional,” but tradition is an arbitrary norm anyway. It’s just choosing what someone likes from all that has gone before us; bigotry and discrimination as well as family arguments over many things are certainly traditional, too.

So, this could be the season we create our own holiday traditions. It’s certainly a season to stop measuring our worth by how successful we are at fixing our families of origin or by how much they accept us.

It’s the season to tell our own stories and to retell and reinterpret the ones we’ve heard. Even that famous old Christmas story from thousands of years ago, if we hear it without prejudice, has the message that those treated as outsiders by the powers that be, including religious powers, are actually welcomed insiders.

And even though our families might accept us, are there others in our life who have chosen us to love and whom we this holiday season freely choose to love? Then there’s something special to celebrate.