This article was published on December 18th, 2022

Christmas is one of the world’s most popular holidays, and people eagerly await celebrating it with their loved ones. For fortunate people, Christmas brings warm and pleasant memories. However, many, especially queer and trans people, do not share positive memories of the occasion. 

Celebrating Christmas with their family gives them an immense amount of stress and anxiety. Spending Christmas time with family means entering a toxic environment again where they cannot be fully themselves.

Do you also feel the same? Stress no more. HomoCulture presents a few things you can do to get through the holiday season without fighting with your family. Keep reading to learn more about them!

How Can LGBTQ+ Individuals Stay Relaxed with Their Families Over Christmas?

Here are a few tips the LGBTQ+ community needs to follow this year to spend a great time with their families over Christmas:

1) Practice Self-Care 

It is important to look after yourself before and during the holiday season. You can exercise, read, write, or go shopping. Whatever self-care suits you, do it. Just don’t sit in one place and overthink.  

2) Prepare Yourself for Christmas Interrogation 

During the holiday season, you must be a part of many family gatherings, and your relatives can throw a lot of questions at you. Therefore, why not prepare yourself for them before Christmas to avoid awkward situations? It can be the usual ones – partner, marriage, and kids. 

Preparing for these questions beforehand will boost your confidence and reduce the anxiety you might be feeling. 

3) Avoid Topics Loaded with Potential Conflicts 

If you want to spend a great holiday season with your family this year, try to avoid discussing topics that trigger disputes. As a member of your family, you will know the ones very well. 

4) Stay in the Present  

This holiday season, try to deviate your mind from the things that happened in the past or worry about what may happen in the future. Enjoy the present moment. Otherwise, you will regret it later. 

5) Avoid Forced Family Bonding 

Your relationship with your family members may be strained due to coming out or behaving differently. For many, there might be mildly uncomfortable. However, some people have extremely toxic and abusive family members. Therefore, being stuck with them over Christmas can cause queer and trans people a significant amount of stress.

While Christmas is a time for forgiveness, sometimes reconciliation is quite a big deal. If you cannot forgive them and let the bygones, be bygones, don’t be so hard on yourself just for Christmas. Instead of feeling emotionally drained by your toxic and abusive family members, spend the holiday season with your friends like family.