Here’s a little fun fact about me: I love winter.
I mean it. I’m that person who gets excited when they see snow falling on the ground and always tries to eat some, even though I’m almost thirty. I love the crunch of wet snow under my boots and the fluffiness of dry snow on my hands, hands cold in fingerless gloves as I brush it off of my car. Snow is wonderful; it blankets the world in quiet in a way that nothing else does, and it only comes around once a year where I live. The first snow signals the end of the year, and the end of the year is the start of the holidays.
I grew up celebrating Christmas, and while I celebrate it more nowadays as a secular holiday with family, far removed from the annual church play where I was always given a solo song even though I asked not to be, I do still celebrate it. I love the bad Christmas movies and the Youtuber reviews that show me the worst Christmas movies out there. I love watching the same schlock every year about Rudolph and Yukon Cornelius, singing along with Herbie as if it’s my first time watching the movie when he sings “You can’t fire me, I quit! I just don’t fit in,” a song I’ve probably heard a thousand times.
While I still enjoy the season of Christmas, the feeling of the season has admittedly changed for me since I was a kid. It’s a lot more stressful now than it used to be. Driving in the snow and ice is never fun, and even potentially dangerous. It’s much harder to take a snow day from work when businesses seem to never close no matter what the weather brings. I rarely have money to buy all of my friends and family Christmas gifts. By the time it comes around I’m almost too exhausted to enjoy the day itself.
But it’s not just different because I work in customer service, or because I now understand much better how expensive gifts can be, or because snow comes later and later every year if at all; it also feels different because I know I’m ace now. Growing up, I had no idea.; that makes me view the day and how it was always sold to me differently.
I’ll start by reflecting on Christmas movies. How we engage with media and what we’re shown in childhood can influence us for the rest of our lives, and Christmas movies are no exception.
Christmas movies are a vast pool of mostly sub-par stories. They’re unique in that they don’t need to be good, provided that they make you feel good while watching them, which is part of what allows so many bad, repetitive Christmas movies to exist on the Hallmark Channel alone — so many that there is even a Fantasy Hallmark League to try and guess what the most-watched movie of the year will be. There are so many Christmas movies that if I were to take this blog post to summarize all of them, it might never end. Some of my personal favorites include Christmas Mail, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Black Christmas. All of these movies are very different in plot, genre, and quality, but nevertheless, they have something in common, something almost all Christmas movies share — a love story somewhere in there between a heterosexual white couple.
I am not the first queer person to comment on living in a world saturated with non-queer love stories from childhood, nor will I be the last. This is a topic so commonly discussed that queer-baiting is one of the popular associations with my favorite TV show, Supernatural. (Which is an essay for another time. Let me know if you’re interested.) While there have been some queer Christmas movies on mainstream services in recent years, this is not the norm. Most often the stories we’re presented with for holiday magic are a mixture of consumerism with a straight alloromantic love story packaged right on top, the bow tying together a perfect picture of happiness.
It’s interesting to think that the Coca-Cola Santa Claus which, while his design was started as part of a political cartoon about extending Veteran benefits in the United States, was one of the first examples of lifestyle branding. I bring this up not only because the history of the image of our jolly old friend is interesting but also because I would argue that the prominence of nonqueer Christmas love stories is an example of lifestyle branding in its own right — buy these gifts, believe in Santa, and you too will live happily ever after with the one you love.
I am alloromantic, meaning I am not aromantic, and I’ve been in love before in the romantic sense. Many times. I’ve even been engaged before, though that didn’t work out. I think it fell apart because, for most of my life, I’ve been in love with the idea of love instead of the object of my affection. It’s much easier to be in love with an idea than it is with a person, just as it’s much easier to be in love with the idea of Christmas than it is with the reality of the holiday and its history. But — what about when you don’t fit into the idea you’ve been raised to love? What about when who you are fundamentally isn’t a brown paper package tied up with string? What about when you aren’t you favorite thing?
As I come to terms more and more with my queerness, as well as with my aceness, I find myself more and more distant from the traditional love stories I grew up with. In my case I never really enjoyed most of them; women in rom coms are often passive receivers of affection instead of active players in their own stories, and often the men we’re presented with are emotionally manipulative and abusive but it’s presented as if possessive behaviors are signs of affection. In some movies, the roles are reversed, but it isn’t better the other way around. A toxic relationship is still toxic, no matter who plays what role. I find this genre most often boring, tiring, and sometimes even insulting, wishing that the love stories most often portrayed in popular media were emotionally healthy.
Christmas movies, though, were a soft spot for me here, as was the Christmas holiday. Maybe life wasn’t perfect but at least there was one day where my family and friends seemed to collectively agree to be kind to each other, and that was significant. That warm, fuzzy, “I love you back” feeling — that was something. I thought so, anyway. Like with most things I’d fallen in love not with the day, but instead with the idea of the feeling that was being sold to me. Call me a sap — but it’s true. I didn’t want love in the long term real life “who’s taking out the trash tonight” sense, but I thought I did because the first part of that was the idea of love. I tied it into so many times of the year, including Valentine’s Day, summer, and December the 25th.
I think now that what I really wanted was to be like the people I saw on screen because they seemed like they fit in with others. I never really felt that growing up. I had friends, and boyfriends, and was considered popular by my peers, but I also had eccentricities that I was always trying and failing to hide. I didn’t know that one of these traits that would have been perceived in my tiny homophobic town as an eccentricity was my hidden demisexuality, as I didn’t know what that was growing up. I did know, though, that I didn’t look at relationships the way my peers did and that I wanted to so badly that I tried to mold myself into something I wasn’t. Tying everything up with a bow on Christmas Eve, getting ready for the next morning, sharing a kiss under the mistletoe — everyone seemed to want these things, and I wanted to be like them, so I told myself I wanted it too. Sometimes I did want them, but most the time I didn’t know the difference between wanting it and wanting to want it.
I don’t write this to grieve not knowing my queerness growing up. I have, and still grieve that, but that is not my focus here. No matter what I do, those years are passed, and I cannot get them back. That’s okay. I don’t want to tie my life up with the pretty, heteronormative ribbons I was sold as a child anymore.
Christmas has undeniably changed for me; I’m sure it has for many of us coming to terms with this sort of second adolescence in adulthood that comes with accepting your own queerness. Even so, my ace lens gives me a sense of clarity now that I didn’t have before. I know now part of why romcoms are so confounding to me isn’t just because I can never turn my brain off; it’s also because I was being sold a form of love story I fundamentally don’t want. As much as you can try to mold yourself into something you think the world wants you to be, deep down, you are still you.
I am not a person destined for love under a mistletoe who is going to save Christmas from an incompetent old man. My life isn’t going to wrap up neatly as credits roll past my cute little house in the suburbs, hugging whoever put up with all of my crap as the camera zooms out. No; that will never be me. Instead, I am the person next door after the credits, sitting on my bed watching A Very Supernatural Christmas with my cats and a bottle of wine. I don’t know what all the drama was next door, but that’s okay. I don’t need to know. I don’t need to mold myself to fit into what I was raised with, or what I thought I was supposed to want. I’m going to have a good Christmas anyway, queerness and all. (And now that it’s January, a good new year.)
Elle here! I just wanted to say a big thanks to my patrons and readers for your support in making posts like this possible; thank you. If you’d like to help me write more keep the lights on and keep writing, consider supporting me on Patreon, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or share this blog with your friends and foes on social media. You can follow me on TikTok, Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and subscribe to my channel on YouTube if you’d like. You can also contact me directly at secretladyspider@gmail.com — I do interviews about demisexuality, asexuality, ADHD, and disability, and more! I also just like it when people say hi. To take a look at my publications, interviews I’ve done for media, podcasts, and keep up to date with new stuff, check out my linktree. Again, thank you for reading my words; it means the world to me. Have an amazing day!
