The Gay Icons of Christmas Classics

Despite the presence of Juliette Lewis, Laura Dern’s mom, and Beverly D’Angelo’s blouse serving peek-a-boo cleavage all through Christmas Eve, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation doesn’t offer much in the way of gay iconography. This is an exceedingly heteronormative movie, centered on Chevy Chase’s maniacal need to be the all-American family man (and see some saleslady’s boobies). But that all changes in the third act when Aunt Bethany shows up for Christmas Eve dinner. Bethany’s place in the Griswold family tree is unclear. She’s from Ellen’s side of the family, but she doesn’t seem to be her aunt, because Doris Roberts doesn’t relate to her like a sister. Ellen’s great-aunt? Seems closer to the truth. Anyway, Bethany is old as hell, shows up wearing a technicolor-dream-plaid coat that looked like the winter version of “the Miami Sound Machine just exploded all over you,” and is immediately the center of attention.

Like any true gay icon, she isn’t appreciated in her own time. Her avant garde Christmas gifts — her cat and her jello mold, gift-wrapped in boxes — are nothing short of Warholian statements about the absurdity of holiday-season capitalism, but her family members reject them. Her decision to recite the Pledge of Allegiance instead of the traditional prayer blessing is a fearless statement against the co-mingling of church and state. “Grace? She died thirty years ago!” Why yes, in many ways Hollywood screen icon Grace Kelly did die (at least, her career did) when she became princess of Monaco, thirty years before the events of this film. Icons remembering icons.

Where to stream National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

This is an easy one. Hermey is sensitive, spends most of his time by himself, and feels ostracized from his conformist community of elves. The toymaker-normative world of the North Pole doesn’t have a whole lot of empathy for anyone whose dreams might not include hammering out rocking horses all day. No, Hermey longs for the wilder, more vibrant life of dentistry, honey! Serve, work, fill in that cavity! Category is: root canal fantasy!

Honestly, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is head-to-toe gay allegory. Though in a way, any bullying narrative is. But Rudolph and Hermey are both ostracized: Rudolph for his nose, Hermey for his inclinations. They end up on the Island of Misfit Toys, which is a menagerie of gay estrangement symbolism. All these toys who didn’t turn out the way they were expected to, sent to live on an island together. Does the Island of Misfit Toys have a theater district? A West Village club scene? Come through, Charlie-in-the-Box, your community needs you.

But it’s Hermey we come back to. Hermie who longs to follow his own path. How many little kids watched Rudolph and connected to Hermie not knowing why?

Where to stream Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

There is a LOT of competition for top gay icon in The Year Without a Santa Claus. This is, after all, the Rankin-Bass Christmas special that features Shirley Booth as the voice of Mrs. Claus, singing a song about how she could do a pretty darn good job as Santa, gender roles be damned.

But the most memorable parts of this special are the Heat Miser and Snow Miser, fraternal overlords of the north and south who guard their preferred weather systems jealously. They’re bitchy, territorial, suspicious of everyone’s motives, and have a strained relationship with their mother. They are the clearest example of bitchy gays of a certain age in children’s entertainment since Statler and Waldorf on The Muppet Show.

They also have a phenomenal flair for a production number, complete with backup singers and choreography. The only problem with them is that they’re those one-track-mind queens who only ever talk about one thing when they’re among friends. Only instead of Bernadette Peters or Smash, it’s … cold. The generalized concept of cold is Snow Miser’s Bernadette Peters. He’s a snow queen.

Where to stream The Year Without a Santa Claus

Frosty the Snowman is the picture of straight male mediocrity being valued over gay excellence. Frosty is only alive for one day, and in the span of about an hour, he’s lured all of the school children away from Professor Hinkle’s magic show so they can march through the town, disrupting traffic, throwing snowballs, and generally being a menace. He even gets one school girl to escort him to the North Pole despite her being severely not dressed for it. This kind of behavior on anyone else would be seemed reckless and even dangerous, but because he’s straight, young (only came to life that day!), and — let’s call it out — white, he gets away with it.

Meanwhile, Professor Hinkle just becomes embittered at the world. The constant shunning and ridicule and abandonment by his pet rabbit — Hocus Pocus the rabbit is Not An Ally! — all really start to take its toll. What was Professor Hinkle’s crime, exactly? Being too good of a magician? Clearly, he’s the one who put in the effort to enchant that hat of his in the first place. Why shouldn’t he get to keep it? Time and again, Hinkle gets humiliated or shamed just for sticking up for himself and his rights. What gay person couldn’t find inspiration in that, even if he is made into the villain of the piece?

Where to stream Frosty the Snowman

In the annals of Christmas classics, gay people have had few icons to turn to, not even in the classic Old Hollywood sense. There are no major female roles to speak of in the Scrooge adaptations, for one thing. Even in It’s a Wonderful Life, Donna Reed plays more of a dutiful wife than a character with Golden Age chutzpah. Enter Gloria Grahame as Violet Bick, the Other Girl in Bedford Falls who George Bailey might’ve fallen for were it not for Mary. Violet is the head-turned in town, driving men to distraction. She even gets Frank Capra to give her a car-horn “aaaaOOOOOGAH” in appreciation.

In the story leading up to George’s fateful vision of what life would’ve been without him, Violet is making plans to skip town and head to New York City. Judging by her demeanor, she’s leaving somewhat in disgrace, escaping to the Big Apple where she will no doubt have to fight to make a name for herself. Violet is glamorous, seductive, and looks fabulous in fur, but she also betrays a vulnerability that we can relate to.

Even better, Violet was played by Gloria Grahame, a glamorous Hollywood actress whose personal life was plagued by scandal and innuendo and whose later years were recently turned into a movie (Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool), where she was played by Annette Bening. If that’s not gay icon status, what is?

Where to stream It's a Wonderful Life