I Laughed Until I Almost...

 A couple nights ago we ushered in the Holiday season formally around here by watching one of our favorite Christmas movie classics, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. It stars "Chevy Chase." It was released in 1989 and everytime I watch it I laugh until I almost wet myself. Which I guess is one of the hallmarks of being an older feminine person anyway. It is so popular it is still showing in a few of the local theatres around here which are still open. 

As the holidays are here, I also had a powerful reminder of the season last night. When I went out the front door to do the decidedly unglamorous task of taking our recyclables out to the bin last night, immediately I was surprised by big fluffy snowflakes and a small coating of snow on the cars. The snow along with the amount of colorful Christmas lights on the street combined for a wonderful holiday scene in my mind. 

Once I returned to the warmth of the house, I began to think of the feelings I had during Christmas as I grew up and beyond. As I have written before here in Cyrsti's Condo, much of my early childhood memories of holiday gifts was similar to "Ralphie" in the movie A Christmas Story. 

In the movie, one of the central themes is how badly the oldest son "Ralphie" wanted a BB Gun. In my case, I wanted a doll and got a BB Gun instead. The gift was a direct reinforcement of my gender dysphoria as I was growing up. 

Of course too, there were the trips to my relatives for Christmas. I had two girl cousins who were roughly the same age as I was. They were always dressed in their holiday best dresses with white tights and black patent leather shoes. I remember how I desperately wanted to be them. But of course I was stuck in my usual boring boy clothes and a flat top hair cut. 

Little did I know how times would change for me. 

As I reached a point to be able to live full time as a transgender woman, I began to realize how my feminine Mtf gender transition had as much to do with Christmas as it did with Halloween. As I grew out of the idea of receiving dolls as gifts, I grew into receiving nice women's sweaters and skirts. More importantly, I was able to get out of the house and explore the world.

Between now and Christmas, I will be writing about them here in Cyrsti's Condo. 

Good News...Almost

This holiday season, for the first time ever, LGBTQ characters are beginning to show up in made for television movies on major networks such as the "Hallmark Channel." Overall, seven were mentioned in the post I read. The photo below comes from the "Christmas House." 

That's all well and good as the "G" is featured as a subplot in the show, the "T" in all the shows featured for their diversity, only one had a transgender character, Candis Cayne..  (below). It's called "I Hate New Years"

I suppose it is a start. Of more interest to the transgender community would be a story of how a trans character gathered her courage and came out to her family during a holiday family get together. My confession is I never had the courage to do it. When I told my brother and sister in law who inherited the annual dinner by default when my wife died about me being transgender, they basically told me not to come as my true self. That was it, I haven't seen them since. On the other hand, here is Connie's experience:

" It was a Thanksgiving Day, more than a few years ago, that I made my physical appearance as my true self to my family. My "secret" had long been let out by that time, but it was also past time that I should have normalized myself to those most dear to me. For myself, it had become abnormal to keep my female and male selves separate - because they had actually become melded into the person I am. As normal as I felt my womanhood was to me, it would never be normalized until it could be perceived as normal by others - especially by my family. While it is one of the regrets I have that I never made an attempt to normalize the relationship with my mother as her daughter, it was my desire to not have further regrets, after her death, that I felt the need to be completely open with the rest of my family."

Thanks for the comment! 

Maybe next year, The Hallmark Channel will feature a story like Connie and my story will be much different.  The "T" will be better represented in the LGBTQ community.