Christmas has been a difficult time for me since early adolescence. Growing up in a conservative Hispanic Catholic family in my adolescence, beginning to understand what that difference from other boys that I had always felt meant, Christ’s birth was a realization that I was going to hell. That was when I began to understand loneliness from holding that secret of being gay deep inside for fear of rejection. And what I had been taught that God, who knew everything, had already rejected me. I was alone. The mere idea of having someone to love to share the holiday season was a distant and blasphemous dream. I could be in a room full of family during the holidays but still feel completely alone.
I began to view Christmas from the outside looking in.
As the years passed, year after year, going through the same motions during Christmas, surrounded by the same Christian conservativism, Christmas had become something I dreaded. I suppose that was when anxiety and depression around the holiday season began to be a regular annual occurrence. If I had been able to separate myself from all that by choosing a life away from my family in some distant location, I might have been able to change that. But, as a Hispanic, the familial obligations that come with that can be strong. Throw in some Catholic guilt and the difficulty of leaving family was not an appealing choice.
After two significant events in my late twenties and early thirties, from inexcusable behavior leaving my mom and sister in tears to a humiliating public shaming by a relative, all happening on Christmas and involving those who were so-called Christians, I was left having had enough of Catholicism and Christianity. It was something I could no longer embrace. It had brought me so much suffering from its doctrine and by those who claimed to be followers of Christ.
After that public shaming by a Christian relative, my view of Christianity from the outside was solidified, and I began to see it with absolute clarity. At that point, the damage to me had already been done. My experiences forced me to view Christianity as an outsider. I could begin to take it apart, piece by piece, including how what was supposed to be a Christian society could celebrate Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, with so much disrespect. A holiday deeply entrenched in consumerism became more beneficial for the wealthy and corporations than for families placing themselves in debt with gifts from a corporate spokesperson, Santa Claus, whose presents have become more than just toy dolls and toy trucks. If anyone should have brought a war against Christmas, an idea fabricated by conservative spin doctors, it is Christians who celebrate their savior’s birth with disdain, ignoring his teachings and life as described in the Gospels of the Bible. But while Christians have been unable to see “the forest for the trees,” it is clear to me as someone on the outside looking in.
I cannot, however, expect that I could ever undo holiday traditions spanning decades. So, I choose how I celebrate by supporting small businesses and artisans when I can, instead of helping corporations, and by limiting my family connections during the holidays of those who cannot respect my view of religion. After everything I’ve been through, I think I deserve to make that choice. I have respected their views long enough.