ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS
FROM DECEMBER 2021 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX
Sober, trans, queer and, as of this year, vegan, Niko Stratis says she often feels like a bingo card of people you don’t want to invite to a party. What it’s like to navigate the holiday season when everything is the same—but you
I used to tell people that I was a man and that I didn't have a problem with alcohol. These would both be proven false; they were constructs of a personality I needed to get by, or so I thought.
Eventually, those lies would fall like so many dominos. First the part about being a man, when I came out as a trans woman. A year or so after that, I got sober and stayed that way (988 days, but who’s counting?). When these falsehoods were stripped away, I realized the biggest lie I had been telling myself is that I was an introvert. My quietness was a byproduct of hiding so much of me away that there was nothing left to share with anyone. It was armour that never fit, easy to find the weak spots if you knew where to look.
That’s when I began looking forward to dinner parties and social functions – after keeping everything in for so long, I found myself with a wealth of things to share. I was especially excited for holiday gatherings. I’ve always loved Christmas. I held on to believing in Santa for as long as I could. As I got older, though, the holiday became an event. In the Yukon, where I’m from, neighbours across the city would organize 12 days of non-stop parties. Christmas became about drinking and the stamina required to party until I dropped. Christmas morning photos with my family saw me bleary-eyed, or out of the photo altogether because I was throwing up in the bathroom. When I sobered up, I looked forward to the holiday season so I could finally enjoy the parties and still feel alive come Christmas Day.
But as I’ve come to learn, being an honest and open person at holiday parties, or any party, can easily become an informal lecture series, with me as the unwitting professor. Before I leave the house for the next party, get-together, cooking trade-off or potluck dinner, I feel compelled to ask the necessary questions. Do they know I’m sober? Do they care that I’m trans? I want to head these conversations off at the pass, hoping that given enough lead time, people will spend their off-hours Googling how to act like a normal person in preparation.
Still, it’s almost inevitable that someone will corner me in some fashion, the air hanging thick around us as I prepare myself for the inevitable.
A list of questions I have been asked, interchangeable for being both sober and trans: What made you this way? Was it hard to tell people? Don’t you know it’s hard to be... like you? I think my neighbour is one of you people. That last one is more of a statement, but to be fair the other questions don’t really demand answers either. Strangers like to collect people that stand out at parties, making a game out of othering people.
“I want to share and laugh and talk about how great the food and drink is, the same as anyone else”
The holidays filter this all through a new prism. Being trans gets to take a back seat – people who don’t know me tend to think I’ve just donned my gay apparel and leave it be. But sobriety doesn’t go down nearly as easily. The road to the holidays is flooded in alcohol, rained out in rum, whiskey, bourbon and Irish coffee.
I don’t blame people, nor do I hold it against them. If I had my druthers I would gladly partake in any number of festive drinks, brown booze and peppermint liqueurs topped with whipped cream and shaved chocolate, with whiskey for dessert. Certain times of year it’s harder to swim against the oncoming tides of addiction, and the holidays are notoriously the choppiest waters.
This year I made matters worse. I decided to stop eating meat in early September. So now I am a sober, vegan, trans queer woman going into the holidays, like a bingo card of people you don’t want to invite to a party. But the holidays are a time of traditions, and especially in the white, western canon, those traditions hold fast to the two B’s: bird and booze. The mere suggestion of alternatives to turkey is a point of derision. Once, while talking to a friend about turkey alternatives, I suggested some kind of roasted cauliflower. They warned about making too much, as I would obviously be the only one eating it. We’ve made great strides in the mocktail and mock-meat departments, but rarely do they appear on dinner spreads.
But don’t I deserve to have good and joyous things to look forward to? Not just concessions like “We know you don’t drink so we got you soda water” and “You’re a vegan right? We got you soda water,” but real, honest consideration of my enjoyment of the party? I have lived long and hard to get myself to the point where I can be the most honest version of myself, with stories to share and anecdotes to relay, and parties are the best place for those things. I want to share and laugh and talk about how great the food and drink is, the same as anyone, not just sit and wonder what everyone else is reveling in.
Part of the struggle is the memory. Years of filling coffee mugs with 49 per cent coffee and 51 per cent whiskey for the journey to look at Christmas lights, warm houses filled to overflowing with the smell of cooked meats and the rousing sounds of revelry. Long lines in liquor stores where feral packs of holiday shoppers prepared to spend no less than one month’s rent on one night’s worth of drinking.
That was my life for over 30 years, until abruptly it wasn’t. And while I’m happier over here, it’s hard to not sting from the memory of what the holidays used to be like for me. I want a way to share my newfound sense of self with the same groups of people I used to hide away in.