Get Used to It: Ep. 57, "Holidays"

oh [Music] so [Music] hi i'm sheila kuhl welcome to another episode of get used to it um this is our holiday show and although in the past we've talked with families in our community and talked about how we celebrate the holidays today we have a really wonderful treat for you because i've asked three of our most active community let's see what shall we say leaders of faith to talk to us about how our community celebrates the various holidays that we celebrate and whether or not that has an impact on our community and whether our community has an impact on the way these holidays are celebrated um i'm very happy to introduce you to our guests first reverend malcolm boyd and no stranger to the show who's an episcopal priest the author of 25 books and currently a poet writer in residence at the episcopal cathedral center in los angeles malcolm welcome thank you shane nice to have you here uh next rabbi denise edgar also uh a regular on the show spiritual leader of congregation colemie in west hollywood welcome to you today thank you and phil wilson who's going to talk to us and with us about kwanzaa today because we look forward to your kwanzaa party every year phil and i know be wonderful to have you talk about it phil is the director of the aids archives at the university of southern california well let's start talking in the order in which these holidays were established uh in in the world so we'll start with you denise uh talk about hanukkah uh hanukkah is a word that means rededication and approximately in the year 165 bce the story of hanukkah began to play itself out judah the maccabee judah the hammer and his family of brothers and his fathers led a revolt against the greek syrians who held control of the land of israel at the time and really it was a war about religious revolt because they didn't allow the jewish people to um worship the way that was authentic to their time and the the greek the hellenized syrians desecrated the jewish temples and places of worship and so judah and his family really led the revolt and after a three-year guerrilla warfare campaign reclaimed the sacred temple in jerusalem and really led to a new era of jewish dignity and jewish religious freedom and in the land of israel so hanukkah is a wonderful story about overcoming oppression and standing up for one's rights and fighting against the odds um it's also a story associated with miracles because the story goes that after the judah and his family had recaptured the temple they found it in such horrible shambles totally trashed and there was they cleaned it up and they were going to have a wonderful rededication ceremony and they couldn't find any sacred special kosher oil left to rekindle the sacred menorah yeah and so they found one small jar they said oh it'll be enough for the party it'll then it'll go out we'll have to re-ex you know we'll have to remake it and the story is is that the light lasted for the whole eight days of the celebration allowing enough time to make fresh sacred oil so there's a story of light and miracles of overcoming oppression and it's a wonderful wonderful holiday coming very late in jewish history as it were now why do you suppose it comes at the end of the calendar year well it comes at a time interestingly enough uh from from a jewish perspective they were really trying to reenact the harvest festival of sukkot or the equivalent of the jewish thanksgiving festival which happens earlier in the fall but they missed that window because they didn't have the temple then so they did it at they declared a holiday and so it came at that time of year but you know cultural anthropologists tell us that the connection with the light also has to do with the dark time of the year as well so there's seems to be some kind of at least cultural connections with other winter darkness holidays well because a lot of people in our community now of course celebrate winter solstice especially i think lesbians have enacted a lot of ritual around that and it seems like all the holidays coinciding with that with the most ancient sort of celebration of uh not really knowing whether the sun was going to go away forever and therefore when the days started to get longer again there was a you know a great celebration and it seems like light is a real essential part of the celebrations in the you know in the darkest part of the year and today if in israel especially you people place their menorahs their candelabrum outside their homes to and it's a wonderful holiday of great light i mean just all of these wonderful lights reflecting outside usually oil wick or of some sort oil lamps so it definitely has that connection with the darkest time of the year so does this have any special meaning for our community i mean many of your congregation are gay or lesbian people though not all of course right does this have how do you talk about this with them well i mean obviously the first theme of course is the ability to challenge the oppressor i mean that is the overarching theme and to stand up for what you believe in despite the fact that it might be a greater army or the majority says you have to believe or behave in a certain way that's what the maccabees did they challenged the state authority of its time of course in that story it was about religious oppression how we would categorize it but it was really about all of life and it translated into political oppression as well and so i think for gay and lesbian people in particular that that theme strikes a great chord that there's hope and inspiration that in the story of hanukkah that we can find an anchor to say that might give us inspiration to challenge oppression when we are oppressed to stand up to the larger society the larger political world that would say you don't have a place here and to reclaim and rededicate like hanukkah means rededicate that place for ourselves but it would also be a difficult time for us wouldn't it i mean i'm i'm thinking about you mentioned thanksgiving and of course the nightmare for so many gay and lesbian peoples going home for thanksgiving and or not going home and and i it seems to me that the that the december holidays are are sort of the real essence of the i i'm not happy unless i'm happy kind of uh right and it's and for many people it's a lonely time of year i mean you know their expectations to return to biological family to return to the homestead people are on breaks from school many factories close down during that time people's offices often those and so they don't know what to do with themselves so we we do find and i and i'm sure that malcolm would have seen in his pastoral work too that there are lots of lonely people during the holiday season um and our rise in suicide rates because people are so desperate and and can't get connected which is why it's so important to find a stake our stake in these celebrations and what is the ways in which we can hook in and to make family uh and to find families maybe not our biological families but for some of us we might not want to return to them anyways and that's the same for straight people yes this is not a gay lesbian there's lots of folks who say all right i need a new family right i have to go home and be in that environment and we all get infantilized and do all of those things that we think we shouldn't have done who we really are no matter what that is but do we conversely as a community have something to bring i mean rabbis who are gay or lesbian must be still quite a minority uh among various uh avatars of the of the faith um but and i'm not sure whether there's an answer to this but is there something especially that we have to bring to this holiday of hanukkah as a community i i always like to um to think about first of all since we especially as we talk about families that we make our own families and that we give permission in the larger world to for people to articulate what their family structure is um and and so i think that especially at the holiday time that that's that's really critical and and just as much as we can find meaning and hanukkah i think we become a much more living example of how these holidays these stories these themes continue to repeat themselves through history and so that's really really important that we maybe that we are the living example today of why there needs to be every dedication a rededication by lots of people in the wider wider community to overcoming all kinds of oppression but i also like to think about it because the story that certainly most jewish children grew up with is the miracle of the of the oil story and i like to think about it that we're the miracles you know that despite or in spite of of all of the oppression of the difficulties of coming out that perhaps we're the light of the holiday and that to me is very inspiring malcolm how about in the in the various christian faiths i mean there's sort of an added thing i guess in the at least in the recent past uh because we see so much or feel so much oppression uh and it you know in the christian right or cr you know when christians are associated with our oppression and yet so many of us are christian and we grew up celebrating christmas um how does this holiday impact our community as you see it it's funny as denise was talking i was remembering that i had a christmas in israel i lived there for several months and that was very interesting not to be in the majority faith as i always had it was handles judas maccabees rather than the messiah and all that kind of thing as a kid i just as denise was talking i was thinking back at the beginning i mean i just kind of took it all for granted it was the majority of faith and it certainly things meant something to me but um i don't think i took it into myself too much when i went away to college i became an atheist or thought i did wanted to and i was getting rid of all the luggage in many ways family religion etc came to work in hollywood and then as a young adult suddenly i had to have meaning and there wasn't any and a great crisis and then i discovered you might say christianity in a different way because now it wasn't the smorgasbord but it was me in the wilderness alone in the dark night of the soul and i had needs oh okay so then suddenly this jesus appears well that had been totally uh wrapped up in christmas presents and red ribbons and nonsense really and i don't think i'd had any chance to kind of know anything about jesus but but now it was the idea that god instead of being remote is entering into a human life for 33 years and that that life is experiencing everything the sweat the sexuality the work the oppression wow so suddenly we're you know involved in reality here and on that basis i left to hollywood and entered the seminary and my 44th anniversary is around this christmas of having been ordained a priest so to me jesus i see is about the most inclusive person who ever lived when you get into the gospels think of all the people that society is despising and jesus is being very friendly accepting there is this unconditional love and to me that is a judgment on much of what i call churchianity which is people going through the motions and playing games but kind of wanting to keep jesus at bay and you know that's the same principle that if jesus kind of wandered back on a sunday morning an awful lot of churches might be quite embarrassed and quite put out and not quite know what to do with this because in their neat little controlled pattern with a great deal of hypocrisy this would be difficult of course i was so active in the civil rights movement and martin luther king particularly taught me so much and then what i ran into there then was oppression and and here were the churches that were a part of it the balconies where the slaves had been there were churches in michigan gosh into the early 60s where blacks were not invited or welcomed so what i'm saying here is when we come to christianity we really got a lot of dynamics going because we have a faith that we've accepted too much too easily without maybe even knowing it and then we do have to confront this inclusive person jesus whom we may never have known and it's time to get acquainted so uh as a gay man particularly i've been through a lot of all this because um well again the church was judgmental on not offering uh unconditional love and i had to go through that and it was very painful and when i came out my books were burned by fundamentalist quote christians they're not christians at all as far as i'm concerned and i was unemployed and there was nowhere to go and the victim of enormous prejudice i'm 75 um been married to mark for 14 years we have we're an extent we're a gay family [Music] and i'm very solid now about kind of who i am and uh what's going on i don't play any games with anybody so how do you use that then to to to help people deal with what denise was talking about in terms of for better or for worse this time of year is not only trivialized but we have this sense that we're supposed to be happy and we see so much commercialism and we're not we don't know where we belong it's a very lonely time and people try to find a place for themselves to celebrate christmas yeah for example in our family we're an extended family and a number of gays and lesbians are in it a number of non-gay people are in it that's a beginning and then you move out from there i think the answer here sheila has got to be that you've got to get rid of the fantasy and the illusion and the nonsense and confront christmas in what it is if you're not going to be lonely and have to take 10 drinks to buoy yourself up in some phony idiotic way because to me the fact that god has loved us enough to share our human life for the 33 years and then to die and and then to in the christian belief to be resurrected and that have overcome death this is an incredible message but you've got to let it get through it can't just be funny little mall christmas carols and another eggnog and a lot of phoniness about it and i think for a gay person particularly i think one of our awful problems that we have in the gay community is that religion and gay are like oil and water and a lot of people have been so burned and so crucified and there's been woundedness for so long that a lot of people just start screaming i mean it's really very difficult and i completely understand and i've been there but i think what we have to offer now is just to say that this is our faith and that we're not going to let bigots who call themselves christians a religious right bother us or get in our way as a matter of fact a hope that i would have is that a number of gay people would kind of wake up quit reacting become proactive and let's take over the churches instead of the churches having to be the enemy let's move in and get rid of the the hypocrites and the people who in my opinion aren't practicing any kind of faith at all who killed matthew shepard the young episcopalian i would like to know the uh two men and the two women who the men killed him and they were accomplices where did their parents go to church what were they taught about gay people what were they taught about dignity were they taught that god had entered into human life that human life then is sacred and that matthew shepard hanging there crucified on the damn whatever the hell it was the scarecrow is sacred and is holy were they taught that or did they just say this was another queer and a and some bastard homosexual that they had the right to torture this to me is where we get real my heart goes out you know to matthew i because a young friend of mine jonathan daniels was also murdered in the civil rights movement when to save a young black woman from being shot he took the bullet and he died this is where religion isn't some stupid little thing on a shelf but it's more real than any politics ever thought it could be well i think that's the great power of it and i um phil that's one of the reasons i think the first time i was invited to come to your house for kwanzaa knew very little about it um it was it was very moving i mean i didn't know where to put it in my own kind of awareness is it a religious holiday is it a cultural holiday of course we could say the same thing about the jews and the christians as well but tell us a little about kwanzaa because there may be a number of viewers that don't know much about it but also sort of why it became a very central part of your own celebration well we've been celebrating you know kanza for 12 years i've been doing that party for 12 years now kwanzaa is is the one of the only uniquely african-american celebrations and it is a coll it's a cultural celebration although it is certainly viewed in the same realm as a religious celebration partially because of the time of year it began in the 60s and it came out of an african-american experience connected with christmas in a secular sense you know black folks in general are very very religious people and certainly there's a connection to the jesus christ in the christmas celebration but many of us experience christmas itself and the gift-giving and in the secular sense that's a very very big thing and i think that's in part that's connected to dealing with poverty and dealing with a reason to be happy and what in many times was a a a very um against odds you know particularly in in the poor south and what have you and during the 60s no those images and well not just in the 60s still those those kinds of images you know did not include us you know uh and to to be a parent and to have to deal with children and and the santa claus was a white santa claus and all the images and the barbies were white and on all the images no didn't look like us so where was our place in that and so at a time when when some folks were talking about black santa clauses some folks were talking about black dolls for little girls um there was a group of folks who started to talk about you know maybe what we need to look at is creating a culture a cultural phenomenon that's rooted in who we are and that's what kwanzaa is about uh it's about looking at how we strengthen our community it's really rooted in community and family and the celebration that i host every year is really tied to that and it is as you know a very very multicultural experience now there are folks from from every walk of life and and there are folks who are gay and they're not gay folks of course there are lots of african-americans and folks who are not african-american who who come to celebrate uh with us because at its core it is about unity it is about building community it is about you know preparing a future place and centered around children in many many ways and and the lessons that children need to learn to become capable and compassionate adults it's it also extends over a number of days doesn't it absolutely and each day i remember you read a number of you know something is focused on each day a principle is focused on there's seven principles and again there's a kenora which is simple it's similar to the jewish holiday and there's a candle that is lit uh every day to celebrate uh a different it's lit at sunset um and um the uh there are there's there are seven candles uh there are three green candles and three red candles and one black candles the green candles you know represent the land uh the red candles represent the blood of the people uh and and the black candle represents you know represents the life of the of the people themselves and the the black candle are is in fact used to light the green and the red candles uh and then there's a connection to as you talked about the winter solstice because there is as a part of the the hanukkah altar there are fruits and vegetables of the day that are to be on display during the entire holidays to show our connection to the land you know for many african americans even though generationally we're removed to the land but our our experience here in this country is very very much connected to the land right you know so and it's one of the reasons why many of us are extremely appalled you know when folks talk about uh whether or not we belong you know and i and and for example the discussions that happen in my family around whether or not jefferson's illegitimate children should be buried now in monticello now the the it's it now our discussion is what do you mean no it wouldn't exist if it weren't for us who do they think cared for those grounds and then for them to have the audacity to suggest that that segment of the family might not belong so that you know that that connection to the land is really really very important and for gay and lesbian folks i think that the notion of kwanzaa is kind of interesting because in some ways you know my experience as a gay man is no different than you know my heterosexual brother or sister or other siblings as they celebrate kwanzaa and that's part of the power of kwanzaa that it shows that in our humanity no we are all the same you know that the things that i aspire to and pray about at that time of year the same that now my brothers and my sisters pray and think about and talk about with their children doing that time of year and then at the same time though just as gay and lesbian jews now may in fact be the personification of the light you know black gays and lesbians are the personification of the unity you know and that who are the folks that kind of step in uh when there is a need for an uncle to do this or aren't to do that or what have you you know and and this year in particular that particular message is particularly you know resonates with me because i am a new parent i am raising my two teenage nephews and that experience certainly will make this particular kwanzaa an extremely special kwanzaa for our family you know it's very uh well 14 interesting points but your point about family we we don't really claim our place as much uh in the history of families but what you said is absolutely right uh it used to be of course the the childless aunt who often was the lesbian aunt would be the one left to take care of the aging uh and failing parents and it was simply assumed uh that you would do that and in so many families where uh tragedy strikes to the the parents of children you know we essentially continue to raise them and and yet there's not a lot of acknowledgement of that and i think it's a mistake for us not to claim you know our families or our churches for that matter you know one of the things i feel very very strongly about and one of the things that's a part of my experience and coming out with my family is that it never dawned on me that someone could take my family away it's not possible in fact i said that to you know my parents those are the rules you know that that you have to love me that's that's the rule this is my family now i'm not going anywhere i'm not going to let anyone take my family away from you and i'm and you can't take it away from you don't have that power uh and and similarly with my church and my faith now that now the religious right can only take that away from us if we allow them to no those churches belong to us now you don't have to do anything to earn that right i don't have to do anything to earn the right to be a part of my family i was born into it it was a birthright and the same thing with my church no one can take that away from me and and we don't claim it enough i think we should and i think that in many ways we people do to us what we allow them to do to us now if it is not a part of the equation that you're allowed to exclude us people find it difficult to exclude us you know and that's whether we're talking about family or churches or communities but it's not easy to exclude us if we insist on it but on the other hand there are pains there are enormous sources of pain and i i don't think i'm alone in thinking that this time of year sort of exacerbates it it's not just the loneliness it is the the shoulds that come with these holidays you should have family around you or be part of a family you should be happy i mean people feel that there's something wrong with them psychologically because they're depressed during the holidays when if they just looked around they'd see half of everybody's depressed because they don't whereas their life is exactly the same at this time of year we're not happy enough you know we're not loved enough and it comes home to us and you hear you know music in the elevators and you see specials uh on the television or whatever so i think the winter solstice you were speaking of earlier you're not going to be july 4th happy i mean let's face it so it seems to me that there's something there that let's quit kind of play acting it's it's we we keep having these images that we've got to uh be you know i was thinking the other day we look at a lot of old videos of movies because there's nothing on television so you have to look at something and the cary grant and gary cooper and sydney nobody ever aged they're young forever it gets us into a fantasy like it is harder to be older frankly because i look in the mirror and i am older but gary cooper never got older uh i mean we're in a lot of fantasy and illusion and and it seems to me one of the things is like if it's winter solstice then let me be winter solstice i don't have to play act do i but about winter solstice really was it had a happy ending every year yeah but to go through it right exactly but you know it's funny when i first learned where christmas trees originated i mean you know that before there was uh celebration of christmas there was this concern that the sun was just never going to come up again because the days got shorter and shorter and shorter and it looked as though the light would go away which i think is the underlying reason for the festival of lights uh in you know in every faith and so the people seeing that the pine tree was the only thing that lived through the winter in the in the teutonic uh tribes would go and hang offerings on the pine tree to the god that made it through the winter clearly if that could maybe could help us do it as well and i mean and would put lights candles there as a prayer for continuing light and of course we still do the same thing with absolutely no idea of where this all came from as we as we do with all kinds of things like shaking hands and having birthday cakes and things that we have no idea where they except we're more druids than anything that we're representing supposedly because well you know one of the things that happens in um my family because the season no is is so full for my parents were married on christmas eve so we celebrate you know my parents anniversary and we celebrate christmas and we celebrate hanukkah i i'm in kwanzaa we don't celebrate hanukkah uh kwanzaa and one of the things that we do as a part of that and and and usually it happens with children so we ask what do we have to be grateful for this year what happened this year that we have to be grateful for now and i find that to be very very useful as i think about it in terms of a winter solstice because i think about it in terms that another year has passed now what do i have to be grateful for certainly you know you know as as a gay man and and particularly in light of light of aids now that is certainly something that is that is is booming you know quite frankly you know as a person living with that is one of the things i have to be grateful for is that you know i made it through another year you know but in most times now there's a whole list of things to be grateful for that this happened this year or that happened this year or this happened this year now and in that context you know there can be great celebration and particularly for gay and lesbian folks you know there's room for tremendous celebration because our reality we started the baseline of the oppression we know that you know and so at the end of every year no matter how successful we've been at it we've survived that we we've actually gotten we we've gotten through the eight days and the light is still there against all odds i mean and that's why that's why that that image of survivorship for at least a hanukkah is so strong and speaks so loudly that to me and i think is a message you know for gay and lesbian people and i guess i guess the thing that i'm always that i always think about i mean i i know i i'm not someone who sits still too well so i'm out and doing and i know that there are people who who do sit still very well i'd like to learn a little bit of that but it seems to me that there are some opportunities during this time of year for those who might be lonely or feel like they don't have family and that would that would be to help our gay and lesbian kids i mean there are lots of kids on the streets there's lots of kids in shelters there's there's lots of ways to be a mentor and to make a family and it would seem to me that this would be an amazing time of year to self-actualize to use an old term to get up and to do something and to go out to uh you know one of the many programs that serve our gay and lesbian youth and to to make a christmas to make kwanzaa to bring to do something to volunteer to find a way to be of service not only does it get you out of yourself which is important i think in helping to combat depression or sadness but but to be more a little more proactive and and to think about the ways in which not only are we grateful for our lives um but to to also to help some people who may need who really need it and i think that's very important component of you know the kind of the holiday season i mean it's important all year long but especially i think at this time again i think you're right in that to get off your case and look around it's the best it's the most selfish thing to do of course is to quit being self-obsessed and you're the center of the universe and you know to reach out i would like to add the elderly to the children yes i do the column for modern maturity magazine which an awful lot well 34 million readers over 50 so i'm conscious of aging because of that and my own age but think of the people who are old and it is hard and sometimes disabled and not so sure of themselves and in the youth-oriented culture self-esteem is rather difficult and gosh a lot of people could go to that apartment that room uh get somebody out go to them bring them something bring you know some laughter some companionship because wherever there's loneliness the way to break up loneliness is sharing it seems to me well also we are just getting back to a place of multi-generational celebration in our community i mean i could be wrong but it seemed to me that for a very long time when we were trying to sort of reclaim some of these holidays and or make our own celebrations that many times it was our friends and they were very much of a generation with us and we didn't have children along there for a while and then the gaby boom essentially said you know wow i could have had a kid and so now a lot of people do by one way or another or have to or you know adopt or take someone else's kids in a tragedy or have our own and so now we have children and our parents who may have not been the best people to us over a certain number of years when they get sick start to rely on us and we're the ones who show up so now they're back in our lives and we have these celebrations now i think in the opportunity to make them multi-generational older people in the gay and lesbian community who aren't our parents but are sitting alone but who are our parents spiritual appearances they are our parents politics we haven't accepted them we haven't said that and i think we need to and i don't want to over emphasize that but i want to include it with the children because i think you know in a two youth oriented culture that's just so conscious that uh that i think self-esteem is a very important word and we've all had to go through that in so many ways but a lot of older people also have to feel that they're discards and that they're not attractive to anyone and they're going against the grain and there is a little pride i hope there but we sure make that difficult sometimes and i i just want to include in our community that instead of just the children that when you go the other route to the older because that's a real rough ride for an awful lot of people because you have ill health you have a lot of health problems and then a lot of people have financial problems and and the holidays is a time when we can focus i think i think the key is to get out of our own concerns and [Music] selfishness and just look around don't you yes i mean the culture doesn't want to let us uh you know with the bombardment and the emphasis on presence and consumer but i think that's the real essence of of really what this time of year is about no matter how you end up celebrating it and and is the essence of learning to move beyond that um that's not to say you have to do away with it all but to find that balance but i think there's potential there and i think that it's happening and i think that some of it is driven by hiv and aids i know that i've been in a number of venues where people have ceremonially talked about people who are seniors in our midst and and i see the celebration that that happens there now and quite frankly and i feel it because there is a sense of hope now and i know that i experience hope in two places i experience hopes particularly with seniors and the the folks who have survived you know and particularly at a time over the last you know decade or so where so much of our our lives was focused on the death and the dying now and to see you know people who are 50 and 60 and 70 and older in our community that's the cause for celebration you know and and i think that that that there's a growing feeling about that not we haven't gotten to a point where we can uh articulate it as well as as we might and the other place is in fact you know what happens with new birth you know and and and and that phenomenon and i know i am always moved when a friend of mine calls and wants to share with me know that that what has been that she's pregnant and that that she's going to have a baby and that is such a moving experience for me and has been for me you know given the last decade and so so that i think the ability to celebrate that no and to understand the magic that happens at the beginning of life now and happens with maturity of life is something that that we can uniquely speak to in ways that other communities uh can't and i think these holiday times exacerbate um the the the feelings i don't know it seems like things are bigger or more important one or you feel like you can be more in touch with it feel a lot of love or even going maybe once a year you're going to show up and be a volunteer for something and now i'm not aware of whether a community uh organizations and centers and places where we would normally gather anyway not in our religious uh organizations or places are incorporating the celebration of holiday because again for so long i mean it seems like we've rejected a lot that has rejected us it's like you're going to reject me i'll reject you more that's right and i don't know whether we're doing these kinds of celebrations uh in a community way i'm sure you'd be asked to participate do you are there is there stuff going on outside of you know the temples and the churches and just in our community based well i think there's an enormous sense of as you say the uh you know that word aloneness loneliness the i mean because people feel it themselves uh i mean i remember in my own life as a gay uh kind of young man searching and you know getting hurt and wounded not knowing what to do about it and particularly a few years ago when there weren't any magazines or papers and role models and there just wasn't very much 30 and 40 years ago there really wasn't and i remember at thanksgiving or christmas some i i saw them as do good right that's unfair but i mean you they'd ask you to come to some like there'd be a dinner and they'd be name tags and everybody's kind of nice to you but you don't feel any reality in it and you have to play a role like gee thank you so much for inviting me you know but i don't want to be here because this isn't so what i'd do would be accept it and then at the last minute see i have a cold and new york city and then i would go out and get a hamburger alone and i go to a movie i was happier um i didn't have to play act i didn't have to act like uh the the the saw that wonderful line in the psalm we were strangers in a strange land and we had to sing their songs i didn't want to sing their songs so there's i think we've this is a part of our vestigial experience i think some of the pain and i think we're freer now than we used to be because we've said who we are we are our people community and we don't have to sing songs in a strange land anymore do we i don't think we do i did have to still though i think that feeling of strangeness excuse me that feeling of strangeness um gay and lesbian people experience it certainly invited to a you know even a set of straight friends that will include us for the holidays because i mean i used to make a thanksgiving dinner and invite people who quote didn't have anywhere else to go which made it sound like i was sort of the last resort for these poor people um which in a way i guess was how they thought of it too so i totally understand that um but i think we'll always have that feeling when we have you were talking about building our own families and we've talked about the you know the the uh the maid family the adopted family the chosen family and yet that's not an easy thing to do is it denise i mean we make it sound easy i don't think it is easy and uh you know i think you know i think lives in in the world today are very fast and busy and lives change more quickly than i than certainly my parents lives did um you know but but i think that's really the challenge and the i think the challenge is not to feel like they're second best uh that this is a good choice to surround yourself with a group of people that you want to be with want to be with what to be with that is a good thing um and those bonds i think can go as deep as as any blood family and sometimes deeper and certainly more honestly sometimes and i think that's really a good thing and so i think the challenge is though not to feel like oh we're the leftovers because we had no place to go well this is a wonderful place to go of a place where i connect on many levels a spiritual level on emotional intellectual levels on a fun level uh and and to feel good about that um is really really important um you know i'm really blessed i have not only by you know fam my biological family but i we have a wonderful extended close uh family of friends who for whom we celebrate all kinds of not only jewish holidays but the kind of secular holidays as well and and they feed my spirit and my soul and i don't feel like that's any second-class family um well you know and i think that's the challenge though is to make that incorporate that into our being and just to do it and be proud of it and i think that sometimes we think that it's a choice you know and my mother said this to me a few years ago when we were having a discussion about the the question of chosen family and biological family and although i was not saying this i was not saying that that i had to choose but she was very clear she said you know i want you to know that you don't have to make that choice you know that in fact you can have both of those and and and one does not have to be you know in a hierarchical fashion now granted there there are there are folks who it may not be that simple for but but my point is that often our alienation from our families are based on expectations that are not realistic and in fact in what expectations that we don't have of even of our chosen families you know because there are things that our our biological families don't accept well they're things that our chosen families don't accept in us either no but what we do when our biological families don't accept those things we cut them off you know and and and as in the torch songs trilogy you know the harry feinstein characters mother says you know you know it took you a long time to deal with this and you expect me to reconcile it in 24 hours give me a break you know you've been wrestling with us from 30 some years and then and then you're gonna cut me off because i can't deal with it in a matter of hours well that's not fair you know and and so you know take taking back our whole families from the way i look at it it's a smorgasbord it's a it's it it's a buffet you know and you pick what you like and you leave on the table the things that you don't like and i think that that's true in in chosen families and biological families and during this season it's an opportunity now to to eat from the buffet and not have to go away hungry speaking of the buffet i think that in the gay family extended family of which i'm a member that halloween is a major holiday in a gay context it just has enormous meaning we decorated and there was a bat up there in a snake fortunately rubber uh and uh just all sorts of stuff and food and a lovely meaning uh and in a way i think that we need as gay people to bring to some of the traditional religious holidays maybe more gay meaning that we can discover in ourselves and bring to them don't you think so of course yeah absolutely i really do well there's also a great sense of play at halloween and um you know and and uh and role-playing in a way that we were to sort of encourage people to experiment i think with all of their fantasies but it's also a gift-giving time um although it's a little bit more demanded i think than the gifts at other uh at other holidays but it's kind of like a birthday i had a great day i'll bet you did malcolm i'll bet you did and that was fun but you know this thing about families is it's always interesting to me because so many lesbians have their exes in their kind of extended families and i uh and gay men too i guess um but it's i i'm thinking about the people who you know they don't feel close to their biological family and they don't feel that they've built a second family and the whole thing becomes even worse because now we're talking about great choices of families but i think what what people learn as they get older and i'm only i think 18 years behind you at this time and i guess always is our friends our and ourselves are really a very very very important component of any family whether you're straight or gay or you love your family or they've thrown you out or whatever that they're just as good as and sometimes as you said sometimes even better and that you can collect people and they they get along and they love you it's just like here's the ticket to my family you have to love me and i have to love you period and it's part of i think it's part of the spiritual journey because all of those people add to the mix of who we are and bring their strengths and and i think i think if anything for me that at least for hanukkah and that the kind of feeling of the holiday season if there is something like the holiday season is that opportunity to take that into the mix and to make that those those families that we celebrate with take their spiritual journeys into into our own and and help that lead us on our own journey um and and and that enriches our life i mean that to me was really what it's about there's also a certain amount of fear though isn't there about knowing yourself of course um i mean the legend of the minotaur was really about that wasn't it because you get all the way through the maze and you meet the monster in the middle and the monster has your face that was the legend or facing your lion same thing you had your own personal lion to face and it always turned out to be sort of to be you and i think that's the other thing that we tend to blame our loneliness i'm not saying it isn't a real thing when we've been rejected but sometimes say i'm you know this is not about me this is about society hating me and i think that's what you said with it's very important phil to just uh reject that that's right just take it the the power that happens now when when we do the work to find out who we are to be okay with that now is goes a long way in fighting the odds now and fighting the real obstacles that are out there fighting the real oppressions i mean i i would not want to trivialize or minimalize or to say they're not there they are there now but the power and knowing ourselves and loving ourselves and and understanding ourselves go a long way in that battle and without that you know we're destined to lose that battle well we have i think a minute each to sort of end doesn't that go fast i just think it does um what would you wish all the people watching this this kwanzaa i wish people to you know celebrate who they are you know and to to grab a hold of those things that are theirs their family however they define it you know their faith however they define that now and to hold on to that and to celebrate that as they go into this holiday season malcolm what would you wish the people watching for christmas to give up perfectionism because in a relationship or in life it just defeats you we're talking religion a lot of people are looking and saying they were oppressed they're crazy why would they be involved because we're not expecting perfectionism from anything including religion so i'd say get real i would hope that people could kind of look in the mirror get a sense of self and go for joy that's what i would wish and that includes justice and service incidentally i like that denise what would you wish for hanukkah for hanukkah which is festival of lights for me is to take and really celebrate and bring out come out let that inner light come out of whoever you are and and to let your inner self your inner being make and enrich and shine into our world too many of us keep that covered up and i think that's really what hanukkah in its core is about this little light of mine well i want to thank you for joining us and wish everybody very happy holiday whichever you celebrate don't choose among them i mean we didn't um celebrate them all celebrate yourself the joy the the faith the love and in the next year we hope that you will get used to it [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] you