| Jerry
Flack's special pick for Christmas. Despite the cover, Jerry says that
this might be one book you want to give your parents and loved-ones
before you take that special person home for the holidays... |
 Upon
a Midnight Clear: Queer Christmas Talesedited by Greg Herren Paperback, 218 pages, $14.95 Haworth Press; (August 1, 2004) ISBN: 1560234679 Selling books by placing sex on the cover is at least as old as the materialistic day when Madison Avenue and the publishing industry first linked up and began packaging paperback editions of tame novels wrapped in covers featuring beautiful women with ripped bodices and bare-chested men. The objective was clear: generate more sales. Sex, after all, does sell. But, it was a decidedly poor strategy on the part of Haworth Press to feature a seductive photograph of a nearly nude handsome hunk - adorned only with brightly colored Christmas bows - as its cover photography for Upon A Midnight Clear: Queer Christmas Tales. The cover almost certainly fates the book to the shelves of the already infinitesimally small GLBT book section secreted away in the local Border’s or Barnes & Noble where it will be missed by the very people who need to read it most. In his introduction, editor Greg Herren speaks of Christmas as the Great American Holiday that is singularly painful for many gay men who all too often find themselves more than ever alienated from their families, forced to accommodate family stereotypes and straight expectations, and often separated from their lovers who are made to feel a sense of familial obligation to each be with their own biological tribe. Others mourn lost loves, or are simply alone, lonely, and feeling more isolated than ever on this one special day of the year. Christmas songs, commercials, window dressings, and television specials never even mention homosexuals, let alone ever feature them. Christmas is a day when for all practical purposes ten percent of the population totally disappears from the consciousness of the planet. Herren asked fifteen talented authors to write about the phenomenon of being gay at Christmas and the responses are as remarkably varied as they are well written. There is not a story in the anthology that should be passed by. The moods created range from the hilarious to deeply mournful and there are even two ghost stories included for good measure. The writing is powerful and the tales are diverse in the genres represented, the varied situations explored, the ages and races of the protagonists, the geographical locations noted– northern and southern, urban, suburban and rural, and in the unique ways fifteen gay authors write fictionally or speak autobiographically about how the Christmas holiday season impacts their lives. The tales in Upon A Midnight Clear are not remotely pornographic as the cover might otherwise suggest, and therein is the problem with the book’s jacket. Heterosexual parents and siblings need to read this book at least as much or even more so than gay men do. Straight families with gay members rarely have a clue as to the courage it requires for many gay men to take the love of their life home for the first time ever on Christmas Day. The straight son Philip with his beautiful new fiancé Anne is welcomed with open arms by the whole clan. There will be kisses and champagne toasts to the new STRAIGHT couple and all-around Joy to the World. Perhaps the entire and newly enlarged family will all trek together through fresh snow to a midnight Christian service in a church that condemns gays to Hell. But, how will Andrew, the family son and brother, be treated when he brings home Tim for the first time for Christmas festivities? Will Tim be asked to be a part of the annual family photograph in front of the tree? Will there be gifts for him? A Christmas stocking with his name inscribed? How will a gay man who has lost his lover to a break-up, or worse, to AIDS, be welcomed into the family fold in this supposed season of love and comfort and joy? Regrettably, the richness of the tales in Upon A Midnight Clear: Queer Christmas Tales and the great potential value of their content is betrayed by the unnecessarily titillating cover. That is a shame because very few straight parents and relatives will pick up a book with nude male eye candy on the cover and take it forward to the cashier. Yes, Herren’s collection is a superb anthology for gay men, but it should be read by all the adult members of gay men’s families that celebrate Christmas. Here is a fervent and sincere recommendation. Every gay man who has ever felt estranged from his family during the Christmas holidays should buy copies of Upon A Midnight Clear: Queer Christmas Tales and inscribe them as follows before mailing them to Mom and Dad, Brothers and Sisters, and perhaps even Aunt Tilley: “This is all I want for Christmas from you this year. Please read this book before our family Christmas gathering, before I bring home Alex, the most wonderful man in the world, for you to meet, love, and welcome into our family. These stories will tell you what is truly in my heart and reading them will be the best Christmas present you can ever give me.” The lead story was ironically submitted to Herren for another anthology but did not quite fit the theme the editor was then seeking. Instead, the story became the genesis for Upon A Midnight Clear. Coincidentally, it was written by M. Christian. The author must be like millions of other gay and straight Americans who watch Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey in Frank Capra’s holiday film, "It’s A Wonderful Life" every Christmas season. In the film’s most dramatic sequence, Stewart’s character is shown by the charmingly inept angel Clarence what his hometown of Bedford Falls would be like in if he had never existed. But, Christian has creatively reworked "It’s A Wonderful Life," making it into an all-new gay fantasy. The story is set in San Francisco and George Bailey runs the Castro Merchant’s Association. Had George never lived there would be no Little Orphan Andy’s, Twin Peaks, The Patio, or the Castro Theatre. There would only be Starbucks, Gap, and Denny’s, and even “Zuzu” of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence would have died of pneumonia. But other friends have been saved from AIDS, bankruptcy, and loneliness because George has lived in the Castro. “I….I did all that?” George asks with astonishment. Yes, George did all that, but he is not the only miracle worker here. M. Christian has written a loving Christmas fantasy that carries the same message of Frank Capra’s 1946 cinematic masterpiece: no (gay) man is a failure who has friends. Christian gives his story the same innate goodness of humanity of the Capra-Stewart original, but with an entirely new meaning and purpose. It is a story that deserves to become a Christmas classic among gays and their circles of families and friends. Wouldn’t it be a wonderfully blessed world to hear Christian fundamentalist ministers read M. Christian’s “It’s A Life” to their congregations as their Christmas Eve sermon? The very talented Jim Grimsley contributes a “Comfort and Joy” Christmas package from his superb novel of the same name. This particular passage represents a gay doctor trying to come out of the closet but finding it ever so difficult. Each family Christmas grows more oppressive as his parents increase the pressure on him to marry. Even brief trips home for Christmas are smothering him. Worse, he has cowardly cancelled a date and wounded the one man on earth with whom he would really like to be with at Christmas, Dan Crell, the hospital administrator with the beatific singing voice of an angel. Plagued by exhaustion from work, the great lie in his personal life, and with nowhere else to turn, Ford McKinney finally blurts out to his sister that he is gay. Ironically, Christmas is anything but “Comfort and Joy” for the good doctor. In “The Gayest Christmas” Andy Quan joyfully and humorously describes the idiosyncrasies of celebrating Christmas as a North American Chinese family. Not only is the traditional Anglo Christmas celebration slightly alien to the protagonist’s parents, they also face their first Christmas holiday with the news that two of their three sons are gay. In a befitting and lovely ending, joy abounds in a holiday celebration that is more like a block party and food banquet than a solemn religious ceremony. For many people, gay and straight, Christmas is a time of feelings of ambivalence, both sadness and joy. No author in the anthology captures these two senses of the holiday dichotomy better than Stephen Soucy in the compassionately written “Skating.” Borrowing pages from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, most especially its Christmas Past, Present, and Future, Stephen Soucy reunites Wayne Bowman, a deceased gay man with his lover, Alex, who still mourns Wayne seven years after his death. Miracles do happen on Christmas, and Soucy brings the living and the dead together lovingly for one last time to hold hands and say a final good-bye so that both the living and those they mourn may move on in their own separate pathways. The story is hauntingly beautiful, completely free of banal sentimentality, and possessed of just the right touch of Christmas cheer in "Christmas Future." The funniest story in Herren’s collection is Warren Dunford’s “Secret Family Recipe” in which a holier-than-Thou mother of four sons is persuaded by her gay son Todd to allow him to bring his lover Nicholas home for Christmas dinner for the first time. But, Todd’s supposedly loving mother steals a page from “Snow White” and subjects prospective in-laws (gay or straight) that she does not like to food poisoning. The comic antics of the story, particularly the joint commiseration between the Todd’s lover Nicholas and the stern mother’s unwanted daughter-in-law Brenda are hilariously funny. Most importantly, the final scenes revealing the true love between Todd and Nicholas are as sweet – and as untainted – as a delicious Christmas plum pudding. The best story in this unique Christmas anthology is “Our Family Things” by the terrific writer Jay Quinn. Quinn describes the disintegration of a family made up of three grown children and two gay fathers when Zack, the biological parent, decides at age 56, that he wants a new life as a straight man married to a woman thirty years his junior and a repeat of fatherhood with a brand new baby. Years before, Zack’s first wife committed suicide, leaving behind a gay super businessman-type husband with three small children five years and younger to raise. Enter Chris, the young gay lover, who gives up everything to be Zack’s lover as well as the extraordinarily giving and ever-caring parent in the lives of Zack’s three children, Trey, Andrea, and Schooner. But, after he has made a home for his lover and been the rock in the children’s lives for more than twenty years, Chris, at 48, is suddenly abandoned. Parenting has been his life’s joy, but it hardly qualifies as a career resume that will afford him a secure and successful new life. Zack’s departure has not only impacted Chris’s life, but has fractured an entire family. This year will be the first season that the whole family unit will not be gathered to treasure and share all the wonderful Christmas traditions Chris has given them. The old house will be sold and the children have more or less raided the only home they have ever known of its furniture and household wares that were once such objects of familiarity. Chris is newly in residence in a beach house and trying to create another life for himself. The story has a terrific ending that is far lovelier than mere poetic justice. It is sheer Christmas magic. Quinn’s tale is the final story in Upon a Midnight Clear and it is definitely the bright and glowing star that tops off this wonderful tinsel-covered Christmas tree gift of a book. Upon A Midnight Clear is a genuine holiday gift to treasure. The concept is creative and one wonders why such a volume was not published years ago. Thank goodness it is available to gay men and their families now. It deserves to be read again and again each Christmas holiday. Here, too, is a wish that an equivalent volume will soon appear (or perhaps already exists) for lesbian readers as well as for readers of faiths and beliefs other than Christianity. Regardless, don’t forget the straight members of the family. For a truly loving holiday, everyone in the family should be able to hang a stocking, place tinsel on the tree, and open gifts with equal love, joy and respect for that is the true spirit of Christmas: The Giving of Love. |