cosmolinguist | [334/365] that time of year again! (Reply)

Tomorrow is the first of December. I will be even more stridently against hashtag Whamageddon than last year.

I do think the last few years of not being able to spending it with my family have led to a queer Christmas in the widest possible sense of the word. Like that bell hooks quote: “‘Queer’ is not about who you have sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but ‘queer’ as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”

From the lord of misrule to mistletoe as an excuse to kiss, Christmas is a kind of liminal time, when the usual rules don't apply, and there isn't inherently but I think there can be something really queer about that.

"Last Christmas" is, interestingly, barely about Christmas at all. It's about a year of heartbreak and growth. Christmas bookends the story but the song is about what happens in between. The intervening time seems to have been used for reframing: even if the person is still irresistible, they're now understood to be poor relationship material ("My God, I thought you were someone to rely on / Me? I guess I was a shoulder to cry on.")

Which, also, seems pretty queer to me. Not that cishet people can't lust after someone unsuitable for long-term relationships, but again there's something about being at odds with the world around you, having to invent and create the places that suit you.