Have yourself a gay Christmas: 9 festive survival tips!

The festive season can be a difficult time, particularly for the queer community. In true tongue-in-cheek style, we've got nine essential tips for surviving your gay Christmas time.

Ahh, Christmas – you either love it or you hate it! For some, the idea of spending time with their family, spending hours searching for the perfect gifts and watching crap re-runs on TV wearing a festive jumper is pure heaven. However, for those of us with any sense of style, it's pure hell. With that in mind, we've come up with some tinsel-laden tips for surviving your gay Christmas time.  

However, if all else fails and you're still having a hideous time, remember you can always console yourself with waking up to chocolate for breakfast every day and consuming every last drop of alcohol from the sherry cupboard during your whole stay. Staying permanently drunk may be the only way be your only way to survive Christmas as a gay.  

Gay Christmas: 9 survival tips

Couldn't give a fig about the festive season? Then here's what you need to do.

1. Remember ‘tis the season to be fake!

The first rule to surviving your gay Christmas is to keep things in perspective. Christmas Day is just one day in the year. Don’t get over-stressed about it. 

What’s there to love about Christmas? The enforced jollification at an exorbitant price. The sales with the parades of naff, flatulent straights who’ve spent days gorging themselves as they smile demurely and pretend they don’t loathe one another. It’s all faker than Melania Trump’s lips. Bah humbug! Try to chill out about the whole cynical event, and you’re on your way to having an easier time already.


Gays at Christmas: put on your best fake smile and drink up! 

2. Managing ‘family time’

Being the fairy on top of the Christmas tree can be lonely. Even still, year upon year many of us gay men are hoodwinked into spending the Christmas season with people who simply don’t get us. Anxiety, cold stares and blazing arguments frequently follow. If you can’t find an excuse to get out of it, how can you survive Christmas as a gay man?

3. Dealing with the bigots

One of the major challenges we face at Christmas is how to deal with the conservative – or shall we say plain old bigoted – family members. Because we all have them. Other than reaching for industrial quantities of Valium, what can we do? 

Avoiding lame jokes about stuffing while chopping up the turkey should be a given. Wrapping ‘special’ gifts for homophobic relatives is certainly a temptation but is perhaps best avoided. Having said that, the look on that homophobic uncle’s face as you pass a flashing cock ring off as just another tree decoration could well be worth it.
 

“Plan a truly fabulous alternative gay Christmas with your queer family. Carbs galore, a box set of Dynasty, and a blue fright wig stolen from a particularly venomous drag queen are just a few ideas.”

However, the best advice is probably just to grin and bear it as auntie Nora starts droning on about how marriage is between a man and a woman. And then remind yourself that she probably hasn’t had an orgasm since 1965. 
 

4. Set a time limit for family festivities

OK, so what if you can’t get out of the annual family misery-fest that is Christmas Day? You’re bracing yourself for the usual alcohol-induced assassination of character and morals. You have the family-sized prescription for anti-depressants ready to collect by Christmas Day. Go along, get it over with, and then make your excuses and leave. Us gay men should always strictly limit Christmas family time. 

“Pass me some tinsel – I want outta here!”
 

5. Beware of being homo alone

Spending Christmas day all alone may well sound like a great idea – it’s one sure-fire way for gay men to get away from unwanted family. But no matter how many series you’ve got lined up on Netflix, there will come a moment where you feel excruciatingly lonely – and single. So, don't!
 

6. Gay family over biological family

It was writer Armistead Maupin who drew the distinction, for gay men, between biological family and logical family. Logical family are the friends that gay men choose to be family. They are your gay family. Why not spend Christmas with them instead?

Plan a truly fabulous alternative gay Christmas with your queer family. Carbs galore, a box set of Dynasty, sambuca-fuelled Queens’ Christmas speeches, and a blue fright wig stolen from a particularly venomous drag queen are just a few ideas. Be inventive and outrageous.
 

“We're not wanting to advocate alcohol abuse, but for some gays, being permanently sozzled over Christmas may be the only way of surviving it if they're stuck with the family.”

Whatever you plan for your alternative gay Christmas day, it’s going to be better than awkward conversation over mushy brussels sprouts with uncle Brian about everything from the state of the economy to his prolapsed bowel.

7. Forget about the expectations

Christmas brings so many expectations, is it any wonder that we end up disappointed? Many of these expectations just don’t sit well with the alternative lifestyles that us queer people have created. The secret to a truly gay Christmas is choosing what works for you. Listen to your gut instinct. If you know spending too much time with your family could lead to a nervous breakdown then don’t do it. Instead, prioritize your gay family. 

Have yourself a fabulous gay family Christmas instead!

8. Drink as much as possible

We're not wanting to advocate alcohol abuse, but for some gays, being permanently sozzled over Christmas may be the only way of surviving it if they're stuck with the family. Importantly, keep the bottle opener with you at all times and make sure to have a secret stash of booze away from your relatives.

And, well, if you're destroying your chocolate selection box for breakfast, what harm can swigging it down with bucketloads of Cava do? Apart from the fact that bingeing on the fizz may actually cause you to loosen those lips a bit too much resulting in you telling your dickhead of a brother exactly why you think he should choke to death on his Chritmas turkey. 

9. Remember people can change

In an ideal world perhaps we would combine our biological family with our logical, gay family. And some of us are now able to do that. People are becoming more tolerant. Attitudes change over time, and your lovely church-going mother may well yet surprise you. So, whatever you get up this festive season, make the most of your gay ol' Christmas!  •
Main image: shutterstock/Nuva Frames

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Image credits: Kevin Dooley and Elvert Barnes. Flickr Creative Commons