This time of year is a time for bonding and building on connections with your family and friends. For many, it means long lunches and celebratory dinners. This year, for me, it meant a family gathering in which thirty or so of my fellow Greek relatives flew in from surrounding suburbs, to talk, laugh and overindulge.
The holiday period also calls on us to get introspective and reflect upon the year that was. As the world around us seems to fall apart – idols crumbling daily – it's easy for that sense of reflection to be altogether negative; especially after the year we have collectively deemed The Worst Ever. My own appreciation for the holidays over the years has been decidedly lacking, and 2016 has been no different.
This year I spent most of Christmas Day in my bedroom, stuck on my laptop and staring at my Facebook news feed, seemingly unable to head out to embrace my relatives. "Are you alright, Brandon?" – "I'm just not feeling too great tonight." – "Alright. Perhaps I'll see you another time." Only ever leaving to make with the obligatory hello's and goodbye's.
My heart was heavy, my body anxious, but no matter how hard I tried – have tried – I have never fully been able to embrace the spirit of Christmas, or any of the familial contact it brings.
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Why is this? I am a mixed-heritage gay man with a Greek background. Though I love my family, I've been told not to harp on about my "lifestyle" when certain relatives are around. If ever there were a family wedding, it would be ill advised for me to bring a date, and my grandmother is never to know about my sexuality.
On Boxing Day, as I learned of George Michael's passing, my social media timeline shifted from holiday revelry to sadness and tales of adoration.
Admittedly, I was never too familiar with Michael's work, bar those tunes you instantaneously knew through hearing them so often – Careless Whisper, Faith, Jesus To A Child. But – as often happens ironically in death - reading about his life, rifling through his history, I suddenly felt a connection.
We are both homosexual men. We share a half-Greek heritage – his father the Greek parent, mine is my mother. Our sexualities' were both thrust into the spotlight against our will: Michael insisted on hiding his sexual identity from his conservative Greek family, fearful of their reaction during the darker days of HIV - only to wind up outed, arrested for cruising and "public indecency" in a Beverly Hills park. Me? I was caught by my father as a teenager fooling around with a boy, quite literally with my pants down.
Yet, despite his conservative family and the way his sexuality was made him a target of sleazy tabloids, Michael never stopped embracing who he was. Though initially struggling through emotional conflict, he became a prominent and vocal supporter of gay rights.
And still, when many might shy away from the public and strangers in the street given the homophobia of his day, Michael continued to live as an out-and-proud gay man, defiantly talking sex and love and romance, all the while donating tens of thousands of dollars to charities and those in need across the globe, sometimes on a generous whim.
He didn't give a f--- whether his sexuality made other people uncomfortable – he was who he was, embracing all of the love that life offered, and gave back so much in return.
As I pore over George Michael's life story in the lead up to New Year's Eve, I ponder my own; the choices I've made, and the feelings I've had over this holiday season. I contemplate my depression, the distance I feel from my family thanks in part to my sexuality. The men who for so long I felt I had to love in secret, the intimacies never shared among family and friends.
If George Michael, with whom I shared so much, could love, and live as a cornerstone of acceptance, openness and freedom of expression, then perhaps I could too. Perhaps I could more readily embrace my sexuality, and resist the forces that hold me back. The unwritten rules of my heritage be damned.
And if ever there were a family wedding, perhaps I could bring a date, and slow-dance to Jesus To A Child, regardless of those watching. Perhaps I could embrace my partner with all of the intimacy and romance that I deserve. Perhaps my grandmother will watch me – and smile.
In spite of George Michael's passing, I take strength from the life that he lived, in the pursuit of love, of the freedom to be who you are without boundaries or guilt – and above all, of happiness – into the new year.