Monday, December 10, 2012

Christmas In Colorado: Making the Yuletide Gay

By Todd Craig

My husband loves Christmas. No, seriously, you don’t understand. He. Loves. Christmas. If our six year old son’s birthday wasn’t on Halloween, he’d probably start putting up the tree before Walmart and Target even clearanced out their back-to-school stuff.

Christmas to him represents the ultimate gay holiday. First and foremost: Christmas offers unabashed amounts of decorating. His decorating itch gets underway when I’m asked to drag out our nearly ten foot tree and three six-foot long plastic totes filled with ornaments. Over the course of the next week or two, the ornaments are sorted and hung, with the memories of each causing him to get all misty and emotional. Mariah Carey sings, “All I Want For Christmas,” and our house transforms into the holiday-version of Thunderdome.



Before we had our son, he would always do two trees: a “formal” tree and a “fun” tree. The formal tree looked like something from Martha Stewart’s wet dream. (I don’t know if women even have wet dreams, but I’m guessing that Marty probably has a penis anyway.) In any case, the “formal” tree glowed in beautiful gold and glittered ornaments. Ribbons draped the tree, and ornaments by Waterford, Lenox, and Wedgewood added the perfect classy touch as quickly as their purchase added the perfect empty touch to my wallet.

The “fun” tree was where a lot of the ornaments I liked ended up. There were my Broncos ornaments commemorating their back-to-back Super Bowl victories. My Captain Kirk and Spock collectible ornaments from Hallmark also ended up there, usually placed somewhere on the back, oddly enough. It turns out that gay geek chic takes a backseat to good taste when Christmas rolls around.

But when we adopted our son, our trees merged. Next to the Waterford crystal ornaments hangs Broncos Santa. A bell made out of tin foil crinkled by our son’s pre-school hands over a Styrofoam coffee cup resides next to the Millenium edition Wedgewood ornament. And even though my husband’s inner Martha might not admit it, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have it any other way.

After the tree, comes the china and display cabinets. There he displays his Avon nativity scene, one of a few artifacts passed down from his side of the family. The Christmas pattern plates of his Noritake china are culled from storage and make their way to the front. Candlesticks take on red and green hues.

The dining room table gets covered in a red plaid tablecloth. In the center, you’ll find a handcrafted centerpiece made of pine, holly, and ribbon while gold chargers at each seat display both the season’s and my husband’s more “festive” qualities.

And we haven’t even gotten to the outside of the house yet.

My husband is a gay man whose flame burns brightly all year, but when Christmas rolls around, his flame is bright enough to attract wise men to our doorstep – too bad his tastes run more towards the thick-builds and think-skulls.

After all, when you stop and think about it, if I told you I was writing an article about decorating, sweaters, shopping, formal dinners, drinks made with healthy doses of peppermint schnapps, and reunions with even healthier doses of familial dysfunction, would you be able to tell if I was writing about gay life or the holiday season?

Imagine living both at the same time.

Now that our yuletide is sufficiently gay, it occurs to me that our ultra-gay Christmas isn’t all that different from everyone else’s. Both the lights and my husband are high-strung for the entire month. Our son dotes over toy ads in the newspaper and is rapt with all that is wrapped. We’re planning for in-laws, readying our guest bedroom, and preparing vast quantities of nog, a phrase that sounds dirty, but really isn’t.

So what is the most wonderfully gay time of the year? Go ahead with your Pride rallies in the summer, your Aspen Gay Ski Week, and the White Party. While they all have a number of packages on display, none of them quite brings out the gay like Christmas. At least at our house.