Happiest Season and the Trauma of Growing Up Queer

I sat down at 12am, anxiously waiting on Hulu to press play on their new lesbian romcom, Happiest Season. I had seen the trailers, presenting itself as a hijinks filled coming-out story filled with funny and relatable moments. That’s what I got, and so much more (like lots of crying). I understand the lesbians of the world are longing for the Hallmark style Christmas movie we all crave, and I would love that too, but this is not that movie. This film deeply resonated with me, providing a nuanced looked at the lesbian experience that I had not seen personally in media before, from Clea DuVall, a lesbian herself.

I related to Harper and her struggle, from the start to the finish of the film. At the beginning of the movie, we see Harper with her girlfriend Abby, walking down the street doing a tour of all the Christmas lights on the houses, at least one of them enjoying the holiday cheer. Later they run off after a mishap atop a roof, kissing with Harper’s back pressed against a wall down an alleyway. You see their relationship and how much peace and happiness she felt in that moment, when it was just her and Abby, not a care in the world. Looking back at this, this represents an important moment in the film. I remember going away on vacation after I had just come out (to disastrous effects that I still live with years later) and having my gender and pronouns respected for the first time. There is a peace and a sense of relief to that, like you’re experiencing the world in a new light. Harper’s double life was the same way. We learn later the trauma Harper has later on in the film, and when you have trauma like that you’ll do everything in your power to avoid it, and try to have some peace. Harper’s double life may have been unnerving to Abby if she had known sooner, but it was freedom for Harper.

Not much later, we see the central conflict in the movie as they drive to Harper’s house for Christmas. Harper hasn’t told her family she’s gay, and they don’t know Abby is her girlfriend. After an argument and making up, they agree to not tell Harper’s family. As we approach, we see a closer look at Harper’s family dynamic. We see a sense of support and love from the family (later revealed to not be perfect as it seems to be). As much as we may be hurt by our parents, we want them to love us. We want their acceptance. Even if your parents traumatized you emotionally, as we see later, there’s still a sort of love there that we all yearn for. If we look at it from that angle Harper’s actions make perfect sense. During Christmas, for her, it’s a time to be together with love and support from her family. Seeing them a few times a year during the holidays meant getting that support she craved her whole life and was never given, possibly only during these times. She was afraid, desperately afraid, through years of her parents making it that, that any sort of disapproval meant an immediate shunning from the family. If you’ve never been with the type of parents who threaten to kick you out every time you don’t agree with or don’t comply with what they say, you don’t know what that’s like (I do).

We see Harper’s trauma responses many many more times through the film. She wants love and acceptance, feeling like she has to play all sides to appease everyone to keep it. If she doesn’t she fears it will suddenly go away. We see this with her father prominently. He puts her on display at a dinner party, as if she is something for him to show off, like a trophy, his property. He doesn’t treat Harper like an individual, but more as something to further his own goals. Harper knows that, if she doesn’t play by his rules, then she won’t get love from him she so desperately wants anymore, and it’s the same with the other people around her. This culminates in a scene where Harper spends time with her high school friends. She felt she had to do these things, like going out and drinking (at a tragically straight bar named Fratty’s), or playing nice with Connor, to be accepted by people who she grew up with. Later, when Harper finally gets home, she tells Abby “I’m not hiding you, I’m hiding me.” Some people, especially younger people, have had the privilege of coming out early, living their late teens and early 20s entirely out of the closet. This was not always the case. I’m only 30, but the idea of someone being gay, especially in a small town like mine with 300 students in the high school, was a big deal. I still remember the day one of the girls in school cut all her hair off, started wearing muscle tanks, and “masculine clothes”, suddenly realizing she was gay. This was a talking point at school that lasted for years and she was exiled from her current friend group, to be a walking attraction every time she made her way down the hall.

Harper, 30 years old in the movie, like me, has lived with this trauma for years. She wasn’t fortunate to be able to come out, ten years or more of her life dedicated to living with that pain, coming from a deeply homophobic and borderline emotionally abusive family. I know it was played for laughs, and there is something to that which I appreciate, but when I say it makes my blood boil the way Harper’s family treated, going through the same thing, I’m not exaggerating. Her family cares more about appearances, cares more about themselves than having their daughter be happy, and that’s something that’s hard to deal with. Harper lived with this pain and trauma, and yes, it makes her do irrational things, but they were irrational things she did to protect her, not to intentionally hurt others. When she did hurt others, like Abby, she apologized. At the beginning of the film when she asks Abby to Christmas, it’s clear she wants to show off Abby, wants everyone to know how proud she is of her, but her trauma of years and years is holding her back. Clea DuVall was a lesbian in the 90s, and lived with this trauma too. Times may be better now, but this is a nuanced look from the personal experiences of the director of the film, and very real for many of us.

John, played by Dan Levy, sums up the point of the film in one scene between him and Abby, “Everyone’s story is different. There’s your version and my version and everything in between. But the one thing all these stories have in common is the moment before you say those words, when your heart is racing and you don’t know what comes next, that moment’s really terrifying. And then once you say those words, you can’t unsay them. A chapter’s ended and a new one has begun, and you have to be ready for that. You can’t do it for anyone else.” There’s a breath of queer experiences out there and like John says, everyone has their own journey. There might be your journey, who came out in high school, or mine, the trans woman who is still unable to come out because of an unsupportive environment that I am forced to rely on and all the multitudes between that. If this story isn’t for you, that’s okay, something will be, but this story is the experience of Devall and the story for someone.

At the end of the film we see Harper’s family accept her, a happy ending for Happiest Season. For the people this film is for, seeing the mom and dad accept Harper and Abby (even asking Abby to be in the Christmas photo), will give them hope, and make them able to push forward a little bit longer, until they can finally live the life they want. It purposes a world where your family will accept you, where your family will still love you, and where people, whether they are out or not, deserve love. And that’s important.