Lesbian Life: Surviving the remainder of the holiday season

By Anna McFaith on Monday, December 27, 2010 - 22:05

It’s the holiday season and everyone knows what that means; it’s the time for office parties, family gathering and fancy dress!

This issue of Lesbian Life, I’m going to try and give you some advice on how to survive the last days of this holiday season.

First up: clothing! Girls who dress girly, like me, are fine during this time. There are a lot of fancy dresses out there, even some that aren’t pink and don’t have frills. If you aren’t as girly as I am and you don’t feel comfortable in men’s wear, then you are in trouble.

We talked about this issue before, concerning wedding wear, and much of the advice I gave there applies here. Still, fancy dress wear is a category on its own and requires some careful planning to prevent uncomfortable evenings.

At some office parties and family gatherings you can get away with business wear. This allows you to at least wear pants and a blouse, maybe even a waistcoat. I think every lesBian on the planet knows how good a woman can look in a waistcoat, even if you look nothing like the woman below.

The time between Christmas and New Year’s is often the time where we get a lot of invitations to parties, family affairs and gatherings. Picking and choosing where to go and where you can and cannot take your girlfriend is often a difficult decision. Of course it depends on how out your are at work/to your family/at your school/etc.

I can’t tell you if you should or should not take your girlfriend to any of these affairs, but I can tell you that letting everyone know you’re gay or bisexual by taking your girlfriend to these gatherings is a bad, bad idea. Especially if it’s family. It may seem like a great idea at the time but please, please, don’t. I have never heard about that ending well. If any of you have a different experience then I would love to hear about it, of course!

Christmas is a Christian holiday and if you are Christian you may have celebrated it in your church. If you’re old enough to find your own church to belong to and you have accepted your homosexuality, you will most likely be in an inclusive church which is open to your sexuality. While still a taboo in most churches, a dear friend of mine told me a little while back about a woman in his church community.

The woman is a friend of my friend and she used to come to church with her twins only. While those closest to her in the church community knew she wasn’t heterosexual, most of the congregation simply assumed she had a man at home. Only a couple of weeks back she got up the courage to tell the church she has a female partner and proceeded to bring her and some family and friends with her to the next service.

It was an emotional story and proves it is possible to bring a female partner to church if you are in an open and welcoming congregation. I would like to stress one more time that using this time to come out is probably not the smartest of choices.

If you celebrated Christmas under another name; Chanukah, Yule, Kwanzaa or any other, you probably know best how to broach the subject of your girlfriend with your fellow believers.