Christmas, Get Over It!!!

      People around here were getting ready for Christmas back in November, the millennials who have taken over my neighbourhood are apparently really into the holiday this year! My other neighbours who I get to observe like a zoo exhibit of "Straight White North American Homo Sapien" because of our window proximity, began watching Christmas movies, women's fantasy type romantic dramas where the girl always gets the impossibly handsome and perfect man, around November 1st! Then I would see some Christmas decor going up, then the outside lights, and I would say to Gord "I think a Christmas tree is going to be born soon." and sure enough a few weeks later I was right! Even my other neighbours who I consider much more normal in most ways put up their tree in late November! Sheesh, I don't like Christmas that much, I don't want all that stuff around for a god damned month! To me Christmas is sentimental, I enjoy the foods, the lights and the music for a very short period but the actual meaning of it, the religious part, is about as important to me as the Myth of Osiris or Zeus, interesting and pretty weird mythology. During this pandemic lockdown a lot of young people feel like they are missing out, we already saw them going nuts for American Thanksgiving earlier, this generation needs their parents and other people to share all their dumb existence with. They need to be at home with their parents so they can stare at a phone for 20 hours a day! I think they are nuts and need to get the fuck over it! There will be more Christmases and fun times in the future, let me tell you about my worst Christmas ever you young whippersnappers.

     By the year 1987 I was 19 and living on my own because I was disowned for being gay, this means no contact with your parents and I feel I have to stress that because many young people don't seem to get this point. I had already met Gord my life-partner in the summer and he was attending college out of town 50 miles away and I was living with a nuts lesbian couple and a self proclaimed witch/fortune teller in their basement suite storage closet in the Beltline area, hey we all have to start somewhere! My friend Triste somehow got me a temporary Christmas job at the Body Shop in TD Square where I made gift baskets and totally sucked at shipping/receiving in the back room, sometimes I got to help in the store too! I tell you downtown at Christmas time is a magical time, the decorations, the hustle and bustle, the prettiness of historic 8th Avenue, it was fun, my favourite job in so many ways. Christmas Eve in retail is also just too magical, it's like the last day of school and we all get to look forward to at least one day off! Most of that day was probably just screwing around and I remember we were all invited to indulge in refreshments by the TD Square Corp. which meant going to some strange storage area of the building where you could have a drink with some maintenance guys. I was far too young and too gay to be hanging out with some middle aged janitors but I do remember looking out the window to see it was snowing and heavily! Many times in Calgary it snows heavily and magically right around Christmas even Christmas Eve, it's so god damned magical you could just shit! By the time our day was over we walked home in all that fresh new snow, it had been dry and bare up until then all November and December, so beautiful. 

At some point I made plans with my other friend, Lori, to go to her relatives out in the mountains for Christmas dinner as I was going to be alone, disowned, orphaned by my real parents. Loris parents were always so nice to me thru High School, I spent many days and nights at their house, they were like my second parents. I wasn't really thinking about what the reality of a disowned Christmas would really be like, I don't recall specific details because this is so bloody long ago now but I do remember the feelings. Gord was off to his parents in Saskatchewan so I didn't have my new boyfriend and love of my life around. What I mostly remember is the uncomfortable couch in that basement suite I was sitting on as everyone slipped away to do holiday things with their families, first the lesbians were off, Deanne was the nicer one and Shauna was a nightmare of a human being, so many issues, not missed by me on this day, she later became straight and hated all of us and we never saw her again after 1989. I was thinking oh right, people have families, I forgot. I remember talking to our other roommate Erica who was a pretty good palm reader/psychic, sitting together on that terrible couch, she was always nice but like so many young people in the 80's had a hard edge under that sideways mohawk and intense scrolling eye makeup, she had to go to her family later too. Really no one was going to go out of their way to help me thru this lonely void. Mostly I just remember sitting alone on that couch, I don't think I watched TV, did we even have one? Did I listen to Depeche Mode or something? I don't know, I do remember the song Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas from this time, it still reminds me of this time of my life. I remember phoning Lori to ask when are you picking me up? Oh later, was the reply. I was hurt, I thought I could go over for more of the day, they didn't show up until almost 3, it was almost dark. We drove to a small cabin in the foothills where some relative of theirs was hosting Christmas dinner, it was nice, weird, not my family but fun anyway. Lori had already prepared me with a lie, she was always lying, it's what she does, if anyone asks about my parents just say they are in Arizona, which I did, probably not convincingly! This was not my favourite Christmas! Mostly I felt alone and betrayed by most of the people I knew and understanding that people are more self centered than we ever want to believe at that age, I wasn't really that important to other people. Hard lessons, I guess Dolly Parton would call it a hard candy Christmas!? The next year I was in Art College and Gord and I lived in a cute apartment in an old house which was probably one of the best Christmases ever and I would never be alone for Christmas to this day. The point? You'll get over it. It is important to go thru things like this, this was character building! Every moment of our lives is not perfect in fact it is often fraught with harrowing bull shit. The young people of today drive me nuts, they are such whiney babies to me, they want to be with their parents way too often which I find bizarre! Go, make your lives, build experiences of your own, there will be plenty of Christmases in the future! God, we have had 32 Christmases since then, most of them I could barely remember now, what gifts were given, what dinners consumed, drinks drunk? I tell you young folks, in 2050, you may look back on this year with scattered memories but you will have better ones, so many better ones to look forward to, one bad year will be forgotten easily. Consider it character building, it's what life is made of.