From “Jolly” to “Folly”

Like I imagine most of you did (given this is my blog and if you’re here, I can make a few assumptions about you with some certainty), I woke up this morning and just… stopped. It took me a while to find the right words, and some back-and-forth with my husband, before I really landed on it: every time I think I’ve reached an understanding of how much people hate us, I’m given proof I underestimated.

That’s not uplifting, and it’s only inspiring in a certain kind of way—a call to endure, to fight back, to refuse to be quiet—but I also had work to do this morning, and that helped in a different way. See, despite my attempts to keep deadlines from ever piling up by only working on one deadline at a time, copy edits from Dogs Don’t Break Hearts landed at the same time as the final audio proofs for Upon the Midnight Queer’s audiobook release.

It probably says something about my state of mind that I kept working on both until they were done, and did… pretty much nothing else.

When I did come up for air, I found a review had dropped of Upon the Midnight Queer, and I want to quote a small part of it:

I am so grateful to have had ‘Nathan Burgoine’s Upon the Midnight Queer on my kindle the past two days. Burgoine is sharing his holiday tradition with us, Christmas stories that center queer folks. In each of the 11 stories, he reminds us that queer people have always existed and found community with each other. In a world that is often not safe for the different, we find each other and share our light. I need this reminder now and if you need it too, I highly recommend getting a copy on November 12, when it is released. — Emmalita, Goodreads Review

That one phrase: queer people have always existed and found community with each other is pretty much everything I intended to do with this collection. Taking classic Christmas or other winter stories and making them queer was my way of doing that with a particular structure and intent. We get erased or untold or have our voices removed from so many places and so many discussions that putting them back—yes, even in fiction—is my way of shouting it to the sky: we were here, we are here, you can’t stop that.

When it came time to write a new story for this collection, I ended up choosing the original “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas” as my inspiration. It’s not a poem I expect a lot of people to know, but if you’re interested, here’s the 1881 original, by Emily Huntington Miller:

Jolly old Saint Nicholas
Lean your ear this way;
Don’t you tell a single soul
What I’m going to say,
Christmas Eve is coming soon;
Now you dear old man,
Whisper what you’ll bring to me;
Tell me if you can.
When the clock is striking twelve,
When I’m fast asleep,
Down the chimney broad and black
With your pack you’ll creep;
All the stockings you will find
Hanging in a row;
Mine will be the shortest one;
You’ll be sure to know.
Johnny wants a pair of skates;
Susy wants a dolly
Nellie wants a story book,
She thinks dolls are folly
As for me, my little brain
Isn’t very bright;
Choose for me, dear Santa Claus,
What you think is right.

There’s nothing overtly queer there, right? Susy wants a dolly, Nellie wants a story book, Johnny wants some skates, and whoever is telling the story, they don’t know what they want because they’ve got a “little brain” and are going to trust Santa to get it right.

So how did that poem turn into “Folly,” my queer holiday romance novella for the collection?

By not assuming everyone in the story wasn’t queer. In fact, doing quite the opposite. I made the voice of the story a gay man named Huntington (in honour of Emily Huntington Miller), who is raising three kids: his late brother’s three children, Johnny, Susy, and Nellie. Huntington, like the voice in the poem, isn’t necessarily the brightest guy. He knows it, and he’s got a great heart, and he’s going to do whatever he can to make things as good as possible for his three this year, their third Christmas without their parents. And that involves the gifts they were asking for in the poem: skates, books, and dollies.

There’s more to it than that, of course, and given it’s a romance, there’s also more at play, but with “Folly,” what I hoped might happen is anytime someone who’s read the story hears “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas” they might stop and think: Oh. Oh, hey. Huntington. Johnny. And Susy. And Nellie!

Oh, and the Santa they visit is totally a drag king. At a library. Because queer people belong everywhere and that includes our libraries, where our stories should be available for anyone who wants them, but especially the queerlings.