Before I realized what form this year’s Holiday Stroll would take, I was haunted by the faceless mannequin displays at Macy’s in Downtown Crossing, Boston – at which point this rendition of a BTS song came over the sound system, and everything fell into place for the duration of the music.
The power of a potent pop song – the sillier the better.
For anyone struggling this Christmas day, or during any point of this purportedly most wonderful time of the year, I offer some solace and empathy and understanding. Know that you are not alone, and there are plenty of us who no longer find the magic of Christmas for whatever reason – and that’s ok.
So take a moment for yourself, clear some space around you, and just let loose to this ridiculous song.
A crescent moon hung low in the sky the other night, unfairly juxtaposed beside a garish Christmas light display that threatened to steal its unassuming glory, but my eyes were mesmerized by the moon. These days my preferences run to the natural and subdued – more crescent moon than riotously-bright rainbow tree displays. It portends where this blog will be headed at the turn of the new year.
Subtlety. Simplicity. Sanctity. For now, I sit before the Christmas tree, enjoying the colors of its ornaments and lights, but more than that the scent and shade of its evergreen nature. The ornaments, while beautiful, are merely extra – and for perhaps one of the first times in my life, I’m a little over being so extra.
The cynical/realist part of me knows it won’t last. We will try for a day, and we might make it stick for a bit – perhaps even into the new year if we piggyback it onto some resolutions – more promises destined and almost designed to fail.
But we are not there yet, and right now the hope is still alive. That’s what matters. Merry Christmas to all.
My brother led us deeper into Chinatown to a place he and Noah had gone before, where an enormous crab covered in ocean dust guarded the entrance and lorded over a collection of lobsters in a fluorescently-lit tank. It was already after eleven o’clock but a large table of at least ten sat in a corner finishing their meal, and another group of six was coming in behind us. Chinatown has traditionally been the place to grab a late-night meal when other places have shut down.
We ordered family-style – some soup, some duck, some pork, some Chinese cabbage, some rice – and as we filled ourselves I recounted the first time we had Peking Duck – at the wedding of our cousin in New Jersey when we were just children. Telling Noah about it, we realized that I remembered it better than my brother, though the reminder brought back the way the dish was served. We didn’t delve too deeply into conversation as it was nearing midnight, and really, it was enough just sharing a meal together.
The wait staff were starting to get antsy too, so we finished just about everything on the plates before us, piled on our coats, and made motions to head back into the cold night, reasonably warmed and fortified. Before stepping out, we came up with a game plan for getting home: we would walk out of the traffic entanglement of Chinatown, head down to the Four Seasons overlooking the Public Garden and splurge on an Uber from there to the condo.
Three Ilagan gentlemen weaved their merry way through Chinatown, over a hundred years of living between the three of us – and soon found ourselves skirting Boston Common and a stretch of trees lit in various Christmas colors. My brother asked about Kira then, saying he had seen I’d written something about it but hadn’t read it, and I was suddenly touched by his remembering, as well as by the return of my old friend to this holiday season, if only by reference and recall.
It struck me then as we crossed the midnight hour, that this was the Holiday Stroll. Without planning or fanfare or even the most rudimentary understanding of how it all happened, we were in the middle of our very first Midnight Holiday Stroll, and my brother and nephew were part of it. Sometimes tradition finds a way of happening even when you’ve given up on it. As we walked past the Boston Public Garden, site of our very first Holiday Stroll – we ducked into the Four Seasons and looked at Uber rates. They were starting at $30 for just a few blocks, which seemed criminal, and, truth be told, I wasn’t quite ready to end our walk, so we continued on, my brother and my nephew and me.
When left to our own devices, my brother and I usually get along quite well, and I was just starting to see how other family members have inadvertently set us up in adversarial roles over the years, through various expectations and unfair comparisons. Comparison is the thief of joy, especially when used among siblings. We may not have realized that in time, but we were together now, and there was still the love of two brothers between us, and that’s all that mattered on this night.
It’s been years since my brother and I spent any time together in Boston, which seems a little sad given how much we each love the city and how easy it would be to meet up here. Alas, the years went by and nothing ever lined up until this day, when he and my nephew Noah were in town for a show at House of Blues, and I was preparing for a holiday gathering the following weekend.
With Kira off the grid, I welcomed the presence and distraction of my brother – and if you know my brother at all you know there is no greater presence or distraction. On this Saturday afternoon, it was precisely what I wanted – and as I returned to the condo after a few more errands, I was happy to find him and Noah there, where Christmas lights twinkled and holiday music played on the little stereo. The decorations I’d put up hadn’t been totally wasted then, and as I lit a few candles the afternoon glowed inside as the outside grew dark.
The three of us sat around the table overlooking Braddock Park, a random assorted of cheese, crackers olives and soda on a board messily assembled without rhyme or reason. An atmosphere of holiday coziness settled around us, and my brother recalled his and Noah’s late-night Chinatown dinner tradition; they’d spent several post-show/post-game nights over dinners in Chinatown – one of the things I used to do with Kira. He said they would do it again that night and invited me to join them after the show. I said that would work, and asked them to text me when they were done, at which point I’d meet them at the Boylston stop since they’d be coming from Fenway – we could walk from there to Chinatown and have a late dinner.
While they headed out for their show I brought my notebook to a nearby cafe for an hour or two of cafe culture, whereupon I began the ramblings of this recounting (and yesterday’s posts). By the time I returned to the condo to get ready for dinner, it was beginning to feel a lot more like Christmas. ‘Meet Me In St. Louis’ was playing on the television and I decided to get a head start to the Copley T station while soaking in the festive fireplace environs of the Lenox Hotel lobby.
Pulling a hood over my head and letting a long coat billow behind me, I hurried down the stairs to the street below and made my way through the Southwest Corridor Park then down Dartmouth toward the Lenox and its fire-lit warmth. Merry-makers decked out in holiday finery sat around the fireplace, but a chair was open for the taking, and I sank it, quickly warming to the picturesque scene. Soon – too soon, really, as I was just slipping into a relaxed state for the first time that weekend – my brother was calling, telling me they were on their way. I pulled my coat back on and headed out, arriving at the Boylston station a few minutes before they got there.
We walked to Chinatown, recalling that holiday classic ‘Gremlins’ and its opening scenes of pricing a Mogwai. I told Noah the story of how his Dad and I saw it in the theater when it opened, and how sick I got, either from fear or summer heat – and almost didn’t make it home without throwing up in our neighbor’s caravan. Ah, to be a kid in the 80’s…
Decades later, and after several years of distance, my brother and I were back in Boston, walking to dinner in Chinatown with his son, and uncertainly completing a circle, one circle of several on our journey.
The idea of a solo Holiday Stroll was formulating in my head as I stood in the cold wind outside Fanueil Hall. What, after all, was the point of traditions? Why did it feel important to maintain them? In some way, it was one of the only things of reassurance in a year that found nothing assured or safe. There was comfort in tradition, but maybe coming out of one’s comfort zone was the only way to grow and evolve. I still wasn’t sold on the idea of carrying this one on solely for the sake of tradition; I also wasn’t against ending this still bit of holiday folklore I’d created so many years ago and starting over, or not starting again at all. Some endings should stand on their own. I resumed my solitary walking, nearing a lone bull market stand where sausage sandwiches were being assembled, and the aroma of peppers and onions smoldering beside them made for a deliciously cozy smell at the late lunch hour. Music played from the proprietor’s phone, and though the song that was playing, ‘Fire and Rain’ by James Taylor, had never been a favorite of mine, today I listened, and it spoke in a new way, opening up like classic songs tend to do when you are ready to receive them.
I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend But I always thought that I’d see you again
In that moment, the grayish sky began dropping large but mercifully-spaced-out snowflakes, more pretty than menacing, more beautiful than annoying, at least at this initial stage. Our very first Holiday Stroll happened on a snowy morning of similar loveliness, and suddenly it struck me how close the word ‘loveliness’ is to ‘loneliness’.
My mind travels back to that snowy stroll through the Boston Public Garden with Kira, and as snowflakes instantly melt into tears on my eyelashes, I understand that I carry her with me. More snowflakes fall into my hair – silver piling upon silver, simultaneously stinging and tickling when they reach skin. Hastening my steps, I pass the building I used to work in, and those hilarious days of retail flood forth from the memory bank, along with the years of finding solace in my retail family – Barrie, Suzie, John, Ginette, Spencer, Jose, Ola, Simon, and Kim – all of them come rushing back. At a time when I felt out of place at school, they gave me one of my first glimpses of what it was like to be accepted, and adored, for being nothing but myself. My own family hadn’t always made me feel like that, and to find it with people who started as strangers was somehow more poignant. It brought back the upstate New York retail family – Dawn and Matt and John and Justin – and I realized I carried them with me too. Memories of my John Hancock office job – with JoAnn, Kira, Tamekia, and Bettina – and the whole microfiche community crossed my mind, and my last long-term love in Boston – Paul – and our time together, reminded me that even absent, they were a part of this.
Nearing the front entry of Faneuil Hall, I recalled the side-splittingly funny episode Skip and I shared listening to a man sing a rather catchy song about diarrhea – and all the riotously comical BroSox Adventures rushed into my mind – as did a stormy but sweet night with Sherri and their kids at the Boston condo. I thought then of my current co-workers, and the friend who brought me into my longest office home – Marline – as she and Gretchen had seen ‘Plaza Suite’ in Boston (a show we were scheduled to see just as COVID hit)- and more co-workers past and present who have become friends in their own right – Lorie and Sue and Doris and Betsy – they were all there with me as I climbed the stairs up past City Hall.
Andy reached out a hand from memory then, and the many moments we have shared in Boston – from the day we secured our wedding license at City Hall (strangely moving) to our wedding day at the Public Garden, and all the anniversaries and visits before and since. Every step of every stroll I’ve ever taken or will ever take in Boston comes with an accompanying loved one, often several, and even when I’m alone they are still with me.
Been walking my mind to an easy time My back turned towards the sun Lord knows, when the cold wind blows It’ll turn your head around Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line To talk about things to come Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground
Back on the T, I remember the first time my brother and I rode the green line from Copley to Government Center when Mom thought we were just walking around Copley Place Mall. Our fledgling motions toward independence – it was a thrill as much for its illicit nature as for its empowering glimpse at what it would be like to be on your own in Boston. And then I thought of Mom’s first visits to the city with us in tow – she introduced me to the magic of the city, and its access to all that was beautiful in museums and stores and history – and then I thought of Dad, who literally gave us our home on Braddock Park many years later, and so many years ago. They were with me now too, the way they would always be.
As I rose from the T stop near Copley, the snow was falling more heavily. The afternoon was beginning its turn. Passing the area where I met the first man I kissed, I thought of our brief time together – not the damaging, darker part of it, but that sunny September day when two young men walked along the Charles River together, unsure of anything and everything other than a shared spark of attraction, an empty and beautiful afternoon, and the possibility of a promise of an entire world and lifetime in the air. Walking deeper into the South End, I remembered my friend Alissa’s first apartment, and a photo shoot we did there, and all the ensuing years of friendship that found us reconnecting in Boston at every major interval in our lives. She was with me too, and so was Chris, who introduced her to us just as they started dating. Chris and Suzie and Anu and Kristen and Tommy and Janet – and all the love we shared through these past decades – the holiday children hours, the weddings and births and deaths – I felt them and our shared history there, strolling beside me, linking spiritual arms and charging through life, always together.
I was hurrying a bit now as the sun was coming down, and I thought back to one of my earliest Boston memories of my Uncle Roberto, tying a scarf around his head as we ran back to the condo after watching a James Bond movie on a frigid January night – parts of his original painting job remain – the gold accents and green stripes – and I knew he was with me as well, even though he’s been gone for over twenty years. All of my loved ones – whether near, far, or sadly departed – walked with me as my snowy stroll neared home.
Maybe there is no such thing as a solitary stroll. Maybe all of our ghosts walk with us once we’ve experienced and amassed a certain amount of living. Maybe this wasn’t My Holiday Stroll for the year – maybe this was Our Holiday Stroll.
Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend But I always thought that I’d see you, baby One more time again, now Thought I’d see you one more time again There’s just a few things coming my way this time around, now Thought I’d see you, thought I’d see you, fire and rain, now
Trudging up the final steps and unlocking the door, I stepped into the room and remembered that I was no longer alone. A backpack and sweatshirt were thrown on the couch – my brother and nephew had arrived in town for a concert that night – and they were about to turn the solitary stroll I’d just reconciled in my mind on its head…
I haven’t quite decreed because I haven’t quite decided. As I sit here in a Copley cafe on a Saturday night (hello cafe culture!), sipping on a delicious lavender latte like the fancy fucking princess I imagine myself to be, I contemplate whether this was an official Holiday Stroll, or if it would be better to close off another ancient tradition and make room for something new. Nature does so abhor a vacuum, and I tend to follow her lead. My heart and head would genuinely be all right with either.
As Holiday Strolls have historically gone, this wouldn’t be a bad one, but it was the first without another friend to join me in the journey, which made for some mixed emotions. If we were to recap a proper stroll, we would begin with yesterday’s landing in the city, whereupon an early solo dinner at House of Siam set a quiet beginning to the weekend in motion…
By the time I returned to the condo, light had drained from the sky and the remains of a super Cold Moon rose behind the bare branches of a tree outside the front window, lending a magical backdrop to the holiday-decorating scene taking place in my underwear. That was written poorly, but I like it so I’m leaving it. (A bonus wardrobe aspect of not being burdened by company is running around the place in whatever I want, or don’t want, to wear.)
With each decoration that went up, and each strand of garland that got hung, I felt little pangs of sorrow in the absence of my usual strolling companion. Kira haunted this business of decorating, as she was such a traditional aspect of being in Boston during the Christmas season. When I was done, I sat on the couch as Christmas music played, and as I surveyed the surroundings in their glowing warm lights, I felt a small sense of loneliness – but the atmosphere was warm, the memories were sweet, and overall it wasn’t completely heartbreaking. This is how people move on, I thought – from loss, from change, from tumult – and we just keep doing this dance until it’s over.
It wasn’t until the next morning, when I sat alone in Pho Pasteur and a glorious bowl Pho Tai arrived, that I looked across the table, saw the empty seat, and had a moment of sadness. The pho was hot and filling, and I finished the entire bowl. Walking toward Downtown Crossing, a cold wind blew past me, and I thought how much like ghosts we all were, the way the world could go right through us, leaving us empty.
Haunted.
And in that very moment something else presented itself in my mind – the idea that I might make this the first solo Holiday Stroll – and that it might not have to be so sad if I chose for it not to be. We do have a choice and say in such matters, if we allow ourselves to take such control of our emotional narrative.
There is always a choice.
Emboldened by this, my steps gained in purpose and power. My confidence returned, and I found myself, yes, strolling.
Was this then the new version of our Holiday Stroll? You and me, dear reader, because no one else was there. Would a solo rendition be the path forward for ensuring the survival of a cherished tradition? It felt for a moment like that might be the case. Certainly that was a sustainable twist – I could always count on myself, as the previous half-century had proven; other people had always been the questionable part – the messy, life-affirming, disappointing, and vital part – the part that every once-in-a-while made all the heartache worthwhile.
I was passing through the shortcut I used to take when I worked at Structure, a lesser-known side entrance to Faneuil Hall, and a silly lunch with Kira at the Sugar Factory came to mind, followed by memories of a fortuitously-timed holiday stroll years ago when we happened upon the very day the Christmas was being lit here… and then a summer day by the waterfront spent watching a group of young men playing a volleyball game on a patch of green grass…
Yes, perhaps solo strolls would be the route to move forward, I thought somewhat sadly, because I was sad. I felt it. It was hurt. It was loneliness. It was sadness. And at the same time, it was somehow ok. I felt that too. It was ok to be alone, to be lonesome sometimes, even on a Holiday Stroll intended to celebrate the season. Not wanting to shade this new tradition, however, if that’s indeed what I was inadvertently creating, I decided to turn things around with a sweet treat of chocolate chip cookies.
I held the bag of them in my hand as I sat down on a bench near the North Market building, feeling indulgently sorry for myself as I settled in between two men whose wives or partners would soon return for them. One by one they paired off and departed, leaving me along on the bench, which was better anyway. By the time I finished the last cookie, the brief sense of feeling ok with my present circumstance of a solo stroll had departed, and that dull sadness, that gnawing emptiness of having lost a friend, came back.
Slowly, with the requisite creaks and cracks of fifty-year-old bones that lately hadn’t been accustomed to this much walking, I rose to my feet. Thought briefly of going through the scant smattering of shops that remained on the North Market side, then decided against it, opting to round the far side of the market, by the exit that would lead to the waterfront if I’d taken it. On a warmer day, perhaps… Turning back along the South Market side, I took in the expanse of the cobblestones, and once again marveled at how long they had been there, how many feet had tread upon them, how many people they’d seen pass by – a thought of history that attends many places for me in Boston, and always a good realignment of time and perspective.
There were those whom I had lost – Dad, Uncle Roberto, Gram, Alissa – who were here for meaningful stretches that have continued long after their physical departures, and there will very likely be others I will lose before I leave this earth. I walked with them now as I continued this lonely holiday stroll as hints of snow started falling from the sky…
This really should have been a proper Holiday Card, but since it wasn’t I’ll just keep reposting it when Christmas rolls around – it will always tickle me and me nether regions in the warmest and fuzziest way.
We don’t always have the entire say in what memories pop up, or when they decide to rear their heads, but we can embrace and engage with the good ones, while acknowledging and letting the bad ones go. I’ll hold onto this happy one for as long as possible.
If you or your family or friends are looking for a place with holiday sparkle and made-for-Instagram backdrops, along with a killer collection of mac and cheese dishes, consider the glowing environs of Druther’s Brewing Company in downtown Albany (and several other locations as seen on their website). It’s a crazy-magical experience, centered around a cozy fireplace taking pride of place right near the entrance, which sets the scene for the surrounding light show.
Along with some of the friendliest hosts and servers in the area, this was a warm-hearted holiday experience and a fun dining scene for all of us too spent to cook at this most wonderful time of the year. A festive dinner with friends is a very good way to celebrate the holidays.
A line of Christmas gift bags, one each for every member of our family, sits atop the organ bench, while the other furniture in the room sits in closer and crowded arrangement so as to allow for the fullness of the tree. My mediation space has dwindled, but when I close my eyes the entire universe sprawls open-ended before me, and if I’m doing it right no space is too small for meditation.
On the dining room table, a jumbled mix of Christmas cards, bills, scarves, papers, gifts and boxes is messily sorted into little piles, while the chairs around the table are hung with multiple holiday-hued coats. Our home is, in short, in the midst of its annual holiday mess, and though this would typically stress me all the way out, I’m not especially bothered by it. The mess will get cleaned up, the holidays will happen, I’ll look fierce in every single one of those coats, and our well-ordered existence, or at least the appearance of one, will return in the New Year. In the meantime, this purgatorial bliss of unprettiness reminds me to embrace the magnificent messiness of life.
When the office Christmas party arrived last week, it came upon us so quickly there wasn’t time to get too worked up about it, and it’s been that way for the bulk of this holiday season. Somehow I’ve largely avoided getting stressed out, and it must be partially attributed to the fact that any expectations have been lower than low – practically non-existent, which makes for far fewer disappointments. There’s a sad commentary hidden in all that’s unsaid here, but overall this has been a happier holiday spell, and I’m trying to figure out exactly why so that I might replicate this ease for future Christmas runs.
The biggest shift may simply be in intention. There is great power in deciding what sort of season you’re going to have. You always have a choice in how you’re going to react to whatever happens on any given day – we tend to forget that, thinking that we are what befalls us, rather than what we make of it.
Such a profound and dynamic change in perception comes at the tail of a year of similar seismic shifts. The universe will often wait until we are ready before delivering the lessons we most need to learn. It bodes well for a brighter start to 2026. Low expectations, high intentions, and malleable perceptions. So much of human terror arises simply from feeling out of control. We may be in command of more than we realize – and when we’re not there is opportunity to get more comfortable in the messy space of all that we can’t control.
Intended to be both trendy and timeless, this card is hopefully everything you expected, dreaded, and wished for from the questionable depths of my creative prowess – equal parts amusing, offensive, inflammatory, ridiculous, porny, obscene, silly, grotesque, colorful, wonky, wanky, and wildly un-Christian. The very best of Christmas past, present, and future to come, with enough innuendo to erect the highest of holiday spirits.
Speaking of erecting things, this isn’t the first time my North pole has held up a Santa’s hat in service of a holiday card – somewhere around 1999 there was a photo card that featured a fully-naked body shot save for the iconic hat hung only by all that nature gave me – a card that has since been lost to time (and if ever I dig it up I’ll add it to the pantheon).
As for a few behind-the-scenes tidbits out of which you may get your own rise and chuckle, test shots for this year’s image were conducted on a birthday trip to Boston with Suzie, who had no real idea of what was going on behind the closed bedroom door, and who wouldn’t have batted an eyelash even if she had. That original concept had a full body and face shot, with Santa hats on both heads – the first working title being ‘A Hat for Every Head‘, but my body was not quite fit for such a full reveal, and my artistic eye wasn’t happy with such a blatant display when good erotica is all about seduction and mystery; it all fell a little limp until I played around with things in the following days, in which this more coy concept firmed up, giving a bigger hint and some mystery for the viewer to spin their own holiday fantasy about what happens when the hat comes off.
Hard copies (pun absolutely intended) of this card were mailed out December 9, 2025, and scented with ‘Overture’ by Amouage – a boisterous oud-heavy stomper designed to be as potentially off-putting and repellant as the card itself. That’s how we’ve rolled for thirty years ~ Happy Holidays!
Thirty years ago I sent out my first Christmas photo card as documented in this blog post. It probably went out to be about 25 people if my increasingly-bleak memory serves, and I probably thought that was a heavy lift. It made as much of a splash as such things did in the late 90’s, which was a kinder, more quaint time in our history – more seemingly innocent and soft – and ripe for the sort of hard-edged bondage shot that went out that first year. It was the start of a tradition that has reached its 30th year, and this season’s offering is coming up tomorrow, so bookmark this blog if you don’t want to miss out.
Every parent has a favorite child, admitted or not (according to several parents I know) and I absolutely have a favorite holiday card. I won’t play coy or beat around the bush as that is definitely not my vibe, so I’ll direct you to 2016’s ‘Little Baby Jesus‘ shot to end the suspense. That one came with a trigger warning for the graphic content. (It remains my most controversial, as the first proposed printing company actually returned payment and canceled the order once they saw the picture – the first and thus far only time that’s happened.)
As you might surmise, it’s the supposedly-shocking cards that touch my heart the most, such as the ‘Disco Ball Jock‘ pose from 2005, or 2012’s ‘Eat Your Holiday Heart Out‘.
Not that I didn’t sometimes have a softer spot for more sentimental fare, as evidenced by the cards that featured more family-oriented and sweeter fare, such as the 2010 ‘Wedding Card‘ from the year we got married, the easy-way-out redux of a childhood photo for 2013’s ‘Baby Brothers Ilagan‘, and the touching ‘Family Affair‘ recreation with Mom and Dad for 2020. Also of tender note was 2022’s tribute to my godson Jaxon which included a play on ‘The Godfather‘, as well as 2011’s ‘Uncle Al’s Radio Flyer‘ which featured the Ilagan twins, Emi and Noah.
Then there were the wild randos that still manage to surprise – the 2014 faux-cocaine pic entitled ‘Let It Snow‘, the ‘Bad Dumpster Santa‘ of 2007, and our most recent ‘Shitter’s Full‘ pic from last year – an homage to ‘Christmas Vacation’.
Before this year’s incendiary reveal, it seems right to point out some of the softer and more demure images to grace my friends’ mailboxes and mantles, such as the ‘Beautiful Christmas By the Sea‘ in 2008, or the following year’s ‘Angelic Ass‘, 2021’s cardigan-clad ‘Winter Slumber‘ or 2023’s gray-shaded ‘Father Time‘ treatise on the passing years.
All of those were mere appetizers for this year’s main platter, which is easily the hardest photo card I’ve ever shot, and it shows; I worked my proverbial ass off for this one, so come back and see tomorrow!
For my sophomore slump holiday card effort, I ricocheted from the bondage-heavy shock-jock scene of the first to a more somber and contemplative pose as seen below. As soon as the first card set up an element of expectation for the follow-up, I knew I’d have to do something entirely different rather than attempting something to top the untoppable. Cue this calm shot from a trip to the green hills of San Diego, as captured by my brother.
We were there for a family wedding, and that was the trip I first came out to my brother as gay. (He thought I was doing it to be trendy, and I don’t think I entirely convinced him it was true, but it did end up sticking.) Madonna’s ‘Evita’ was very much my influence and obsession at the time, so I quoted her on it via Eva Peron: “So share my glory, so share my coffin.” Once again, it sparked whispers of suicide, which were slightly more understandable given the quote, and at that stage of my life I fervently believed that whispers of anything were better than no whispers at all.
This one remains a favorite in the entire canon of cards, mostly because it’s such an incongruous setting and background. I still remember that sunny day in San Diego – my brother and I were hanging out and he showed me to a vintage shop where I picked up the feather boa used in the featured shot above. Then we walked about in this rolling grass field, an impossibly beautiful day in late November for the Ilagan brothers, who had come from the already-frigid and wintry Northeast. It lent this holiday card an element of warmth that was missing from the first year. It also set the stage for the possibility of surprise through understatement – a trick that would come to define ways out of other creative conundrums. Every time the world expected me to zig, I would choose to zag. Coupled with the first card I did, this one was my way of showing my yang after having already given up my yin.
For one of my very first acts as a twenty-year-old adult on his own in Boston, I decided to take part in one of the most grown-up traditions I could think of: sending out Christmas cards. Such a tried and true tradition also reeked of dullness and banality, which I took as the ultimate challenge. Of course I’d been writing Christmas cards to my friends for years – sometimes finding unique ones that didn’t have Santa or Christmas trees or glitter on them. (The only time I didn’t fancy glitter was on a Christmas card because that’s where one expects it to be.)
When I was a kid, my Mom’s friend had sewn an adorable bear that we hung on the door in our entryway, extending its stuffed arms to hold a basket made for holiday cards. I thought it was the greatest thing – a creation that celebrated crafting and letter-writing and Christmas spirit. It held the usual red, green and gold cards from neighbors and relatives and family friends, but it was the bear that was the most interesting thing about the Christmas card tradition. I aimed to be more exciting than that bear, and any of the cards it held in its cozy arms.
My holiday card would have to stand apart if it was ever going to be the focal point of any card display, and my initial goal was to the make it onto the family fridge of all my friends’ houses, and maybe, eventually, if I did it extra right, to be deliberately left off of the family fridge certain years for being too much.
That first year, however, I played it relatively safe. Earlier in the summer, channeling Madonna’s ‘Human Nature’ video, I’d done a basement photo shoot in shiny latex and a leather collar, a dog chain pulled taut (TAUT!) and a pair of handcuffs (an accessory from a Limited Edition of Madonna’s ‘Erotica’ album) doubling as a belt. This seemed a fitting first Christmas card, because nothing says Christmas like a touch of bondage and S&M.
It made the intended splash and set the slightly-surprising tone for all the cards to follow – even garnering some element of controversy when a friend’s father misinterpreted the image as a scene of me killing myself via hanging (when suicide was so 1992). It seemed a little shocking at the time – feels nostalgic and quaint by today’s standards.
Through the years, my holiday card became the one that certain people waited for and clamored to see – because who else bothered to put much creative effort into a Christmas card? To keep it enthralling to myself, I’d volley and vacillate between a shocking/provocative image one year, and a somber/serious one the next, exemplifying the extremes to which I sometimes felt drawn. More on that dichotomy in another post, as I managed to unearth the second card I did way back in 1996. The years between that and 2004, when I finally went digital (and kept better archives) have largely been lost to time and poor attic-filing retention. Everything from 2004 and beyond has been immortalized here (see below for the full list).
This year marks the 30th anniversary of my very first effort, and in honor of that I’m attempting to achieve a throwback to the shock and awe/aww/eww elements that the first card produced. It was also the hardest card I’ve ever shot, so trust men when I tell you I worked for it. Stay tuned… (and scroll down for previous cards!)
While ‘There’s Always Tomorrow‘ plucks at the heartstrings, and ‘The Christmas Waltz‘ sways in sad three-quarter time, it is this song that always melts my heart – strangely, as it’s one of the most uplifting holiday classic songs that’s ever been written. A highlight of the animated ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’ – one of the stalwart chestnuts from my childhood’s television diet – this tells the story of when the Winter Warlock is transformed into a friendly creature through the generosity of Kris Kringle.
