A Holiday Wish

We all have Christmas Wishes, some of them personal, some of them collective.  I suppose that all of us at some time, seeing at least some degree of happiness, love and understanding over the holidays, want that to carry on throughout the year.

Whether we celebrate Hannukah, Christmas, Diwali, the Solstice or whatever, for so many of us with secrets or anxieties, the holidays aren't exactly the easiest time of the year.  That's certainly so true if you're trans or TV or TG or maybe Gay or Lesbian as well.  The Holidays are supposedly a time for family and celebrating togetherness but for so many of us, families mean lack of understanding or keeping things hidden.  They involve being put in close proximity with our parents or other people who have known us more or less from birth, or who think they know us but probably don't.

For those of us who celebrate Christmas, It is a time when we remember a teen Mum with nowhere better to go, giving birth in a cowshed, with her anxious husband standing by; a few farm lads being totally phased by seeing bright lights in the skies and popping in to give a friendly welcome; a group of three academics or posh dudes on camels turning up with some rather strange presents...Okay, we can argue about the details but if it's about anything, it's seems to be about a very ordinary looking baby in humble surroundings who will turn out to be, someone very different, not an ordinary guy, but a saviour of the world.

Whatever your religious beliefs or even if you don't have them, it's a huge leap of imagination to jump from the baby in the humble cowshed to the person we still remember 2,000 years later, yet we do it.  Vast numbers of the world population subscribe to the idea that rather than being an ordinary baby as he appeared to be, this child was actually something else, the son of God.

I'm not here to put forward any religious beliefs of my own.  They are immaterial here. My agenda is a non-religious transgender one. My Christmas Wish is that if we can make that leap of faith about a humble baby, then, maybe, just maybe, we can move forward in a New Year some time, to a place where we can believe that a baby who appears to be a boy or a girl may perhaps grow up to be something else, in reality the opposite gender to what he or she appeared to be.  It would save an awful lot of problems.

Happy Holidays

Robyn-Jane

xx