Christmas at our house was rather quiet but very enjoyable. While I miss the big, huge family holidays, the way they used to be when I was a child, I also enjoy the smaller, more quiet celebrations that I have with my son and my partner. Christmas Day we went to friends of ours that have become much like a family and we also spent new Years Eve with them. Though, I don’t think I will ever get used to New Years Eve in the United States. It is definitely a much more exciting celebration in Germany. We don’t usually start to party until PM and the party really doesn’t start fully until midnight – after all, we celebrate the New Year and not the outgoing one. Parties rarely end before 3 in the morning, because at midnight we go outside and set fireworks off – imagine an entire city of 3 million people engulfed by fireworks. Growing up there wasn’t a house on my street that did not have its own fireworks (oh and – before I forget – we never had accidents either). I remember standing on the roof of our five story house and shotting bottle rockets into the air. It was awesome. The next morning I would get up and watch the New Years Ski Jumping on TV (something I miss a lot here too) and at some point we would go outside, the smell of gun powder still hovering over the city. New Years Day was always a very quiet day – people were tired, hung over, busy cleaning up from last night’s party, and busy removing the old and letting in the new. I can’t even describe the mood that day – sadness mixed in with joy – and a general curiosity of what lays ahead. This day (the fifth of January) also signaled the end of the school break – by the 5th we had to go back to school (that’s also the day many of us took their Christmas tree down and finally removed the Christmas presents from the living room).
We went to he movies once during the holidays – to watch Milk, the movie about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official. I wrote about that movie before. The movie was very well done and Sean Penn did an excellent job. Upon exiting the movie one of my friends stated that the movie was awesome or something along those lines – I responded that I can’t describe a movie that is a true and sad story with that word – instead I found it aggravating, saddening, and empowering. Whenever I watch movies like that, I know that the fight isn’t over – not for a long time – and that unless we keep fighting,t here will never be true equality. I also know that there is something everybody interested in true equality can do to help out. After the movie my partner and I felt very drained and we both stated that we needed to do something “very gay/lesbian” rather then look at the straight people crossing our paths and be angry at them. So we did the one thing we knew would lighten out moods and we went to Lambda Rising, a book store for gays and lesbians in Rehoboth Beach. We purchased, among others, a movie about the Times of Harvey Milk, a book about Harvey Milk, and a book about the AIDS Quilt (the founder of the quilt was on Harvey Milk’s campaign team). I am glad the store didn’t have a shirt saying “Don’t feed the straight people” — I believe I would have been very tempted to buy it. I know, not all heterosexuals are narrow minded bigots, but still – after watching movies like that it just stirrs up something inside of me. I don’t think any heterosexual person will ever truly understand how gays and lesbians feel when faced with discrimination against us and knowing that this discrimination and hatred has taken the lives of some of our brothers and sisters – and they are brothers and sisters even if there may not be anything else we have in common then our sexual orientation.
What else? Not much – i think it is time to get off the soap box for the moment. more later — maybe.
