Friday, December 5

“Center Aging Friday Tea Time” will be at 12 p.m. in person at the DC Center for the LGBT Community’s new location at 1827 Wiltberger St., N.W. To RSVP, visit the DC Center’s website or email [email protected]. 

The DC Anti-Violence Project at the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center will host its second annual open mic event, “Queer Voices: Unwavering” at 7 p.m. This event aims to create a space that allows the LGBTQ community to honor queer siblings of all communities, mourn those lost, and celebrate the power and love in our community. If you are interested in attending or performing, visit this link.

Go Gay DC will host “First Friday LGBTQ+ Community Social in the City” at 7 p.m. at Silver Diner Ballston. This event is ideal for making new friends, professional networking, idea-sharing, and community building. This event is free and more details are available on Eventbrite. 

Saturday, December 6

Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Brunch” at 12 p.m. at Freddie’s Beach Bar & Restaurant. This fun weekly event brings the DMV area LGBTQ+ community, including allies, together for food and conversation.  Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

The DC Center for the LGBT Community will host “Fueling Our Future” at 7 p.m. This will be a night of purpose, community, and impact and an evening filled with good food, great music, and even better company. Guests will get to enjoy a delicious menu from Right Proper Brewing Company, sip your favorite drinks at the open bar, and enjoy live performances by the amazing Preston Hawes, Tetyana Royzman, Dan Zhang, and Susanna Mendlow. Tickets cost $110 and are available on the DC Center’s website. Funds raised will support the DC Center’s Social and Human Services. 

LGBTQ People of Color Support Group will be at 7 p.m. in person at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. This peer support group is an outlet for LGBTQ People of Color to come together and talk about anything affecting them in a space that strives to be safe and judgement free. There are all sorts of activities like watching movies, poetry events, storytelling, and just hanging out with others. For more information and events for LGBTQ People of Color, visit thedccenter.org/poc or facebook.com/centerpoc.

Monday, December 8

“Center Aging: Monday Coffee Klatch” will be at 10 a.m. on Zoom. This is a social hour for older LGBTQ+ adults. Guests are encouraged to bring a beverage of choice. For more information, contact Adam ([email protected]).

“Soulfully Queer: LGBTQ+ Emotional Health and Spirituality Drop-In” will be at 3 p.m. at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. This group will meet weekly for eight weeks, providing a series of drop-in sessions designed to offer a safe, welcoming space for open and respectful conversation. Each session invites participants to explore themes of spirituality, identity, and belonging at their own pace, whether they attend regularly or drop in occasionally. For more details visit the DC Center’s website.

Genderqueer DC will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is a support group for people who identify outside of the gender binary, whether you’re bigender, agender, genderfluid, or just know that you’re not 100% cis. For more details, visit genderqueerdc.org or Facebook.

Tuesday, December 9

Coming Out Discussion Group will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is a safe space to share experiences about coming out and discuss topics as it relates to doing so — by sharing struggles and victories the group allows those newly coming out and who have been out for a while to learn from others. For more details, visit the group’s Facebook. 

Trans Discussion Group will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This group is intended to provide an emotionally and physically safe space for trans people and those who may be questioning their gender identity/expression to join together in community and learn from one another. For more details, email [email protected]. 

Wednesday, December 10

Job Club will be at 6 p.m. on Zoom upon request. This is a weekly job support program to help job entrants and seekers, including the long-term unemployed, improve self-confidence, motivation, resilience and productivity for effective job searches and networking — allowing participants to move away from being merely “applicants” toward being “candidates.” For more information, email [email protected] or visit thedccenter.org/careers.

“Movement for Healing with Felicia Taliaferro” will be at 3 p.m. This is a space for nervous system nourishment and embodied restoration. For more details, visit the DC Center’s website. 

Thursday, December 11 

The DC Center’s Fresh Produce Program will be held all day at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. People will be informed on Wednesday at 5 p.m. if they are picked to receive a produce box. No proof of residency or income is required. For more information, email [email protected] or call 202-682-2245. 

Virtual Yoga Class will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This free weekly class is a combination of yoga, breathwork and meditation that allows LGBTQ+ community members to continue their healing journey with somatic and mindfulness practices. For more details, visit the DC Center’s website.  

We’ve all known them. We’ve all watched those couples on our “friends” feed who seem to live a perfect life together; young, attractive, and devoted to each other, they present an aspirational image on social media, documenting their romance for friends, followers, and all the world to see. We can’t help but envy them, but at the same time, we can’t help feeling like it’s all just a little too good to be true – and inevitably, our instinct is eventually proven right by an abrupt and messy breakup that ends up being aired just as publicly as the rest of their relationship.

That’s the kind of couple that occupies the center of “300 Letters,” a self-described gay “anti-romcom” from Argentine filmmaker Lucas Santa Ana (“Memories of a Teenager”), which garnered acclaim on the festival circuit both in its native country and in the U.S. earlier this year. Now available for home viewing via Prime Video and other VOD platforms, it might just be the perfect alternative if you need a counterbalance to all the sugary sweet holiday romances that tend to dominate the seasonal content offerings.

It’s the saga of the one-year romance between Jero (Cristian Mariani) and Tom (Gastón Frías), an “opposites attract” couple who meet (on Grindr, of course), have great sex, and become a couple despite the differences in their status (Jero is a “masc”-presenting cryptocurrency bro, Tom a struggling queer radical poet) and their outlook on life; they move in together, building a relationship that – thanks to Jero’s popular social media profile – soon has its own fandom. Then, on their first anniversary together, Jero comes home from his Crossfit class with plans for the big celebration – only to find that Tom has packed up and moved out, ending their relationship and leaving behind only a box of letters as an explanation.

Jero, blindsided and devastated, is at first resistant to the letters, but – at the urging of his best friend Esteban (Bruno Giganti), who believes it will help him move on – he decides to read them; the story they tell reveals that his couplehood with Tom was never as he had perceived it to be. Built on sex and maintained through performative routine, there had been an underlying agenda hidden beneath it from the beginning. As he continues the painfully eye-opening process of learning the truth, he is forced to question his own honesty in the relationship – all while holding on to an attachment that may have been a performance all along.

We’ll admit it sounds like a gimmicky premise, and also kind of a downer, but there’s a sensibility behind “300 Letters” that somehow overcomes those pitfalls. Thanks to the conceit of learning the story through letters – sometimes out of order – we are gradually coaxed (along with Jero) toward our own conclusions and epiphanies as the details (and layers of complexity) become more clearly defined; it keeps us engaged through this gradual reveal, allowing time for the uncomfortable truths to sink in, and maintains a subtle sense of humor to keep the tone from being bogged down by melancholy.

According to Santa Ana, who also co-wrote the film with Gustavo Cabaña, all of that is by design.

“I love romantic comedies and breakup movies, and I wanted to combine them while also talking about something that interests me within the LGBT world,” the filmmaker says of his movie. “We always talk about the discrimination we suffer from outsiders, but we rarely think about the discrimination we inflict on ourselves due to the prejudices we carry. In ‘300 Letters,’ I wanted to explore this topic with a fun and relaxed perspective.”

It pays off better than you might expect. Thanks to the carefully balanced screenplay and the performances of its two leading men, it manages to point out the mismatched couple’s faults, flaws, and foibles, while also making them both relatable. In the end, we definitely get the message: the assumptions we have about other people shape our perceptions of them in ways to which we are usually blind, and the prejudices we carry can become self-fulfilling prophecies when we only see what we are looking for. More than that, it’s a refreshingly candid and mature exploration of relationships – and yes, gay relationships in particular – which reminds us that every love affair has meaning and value, and that even a failed one is worth having if it helps you learn how to do better next time.

On the flip side, it’s easy to imagine some viewers finding both characters tiresome. Jero is charming, and he’s definitely sexy, but he’s undeniably mired in a comfortably conventional queerness that makes us more inclined to sympathize with Tom – who is, himself, perhaps equally as judgmental in his assumptions about others, and who seemingly has no qualms about gaslighting his partner, but somehow still feels more “authentic” than Jero.

Fortunately, “300 Letters” is not the kind of movie that makes us choose between them. Instead, it invites us to see parts of ourselves in each of them, and in the end is really more about the “culture of presentation” – the obsession with projecting an appealing image, of seeking private validation through public display – than it is about holding up either of its protagonists for judgment. Instead, it leaves us to contemplate our own relationships in the light of self-awareness, never pulling the emotional punch that comes with loss and the grieving of a relationship, but somehow letting us see the wisdom that awaits us on the other side of it.

In the starring roles, Mariani and Frías are equally charismatic in their own distinctive way, capturing a chemistry that both “clicks” and doesn’t at the same time; Giganti also delivers a presence, subtly conveying his character’s unspoken role as the third point in a triangular relationship, There’s a deep complexity behind these characters that goes largely unspoken, but which emerges in their performances all the same; and if, in the end, the balance of our sympathies may have shifted more toward one of them than the other, that’s OK.

In Santa Ana’s deceptively breezy post-mortem of a break-up, that’s just how relationships go.

Jonathan Bennett believes there are two kinds of people in the world — those who love Hallmark movies and liars. And in Season 2 of Finding Mr. Christmas, which the Mean Girls star co-created with Ben Roy, Bennett is searching for Hallmark’s next leading man.

“It’s so fun for people because everyone in their life has someone they know that they think should be in Hallmark movies, right? The UPS driver, the barista at the coffee shop, the dentist,” Bennett says. “So we’re testing their acting abilities, we’re testing who they are, but we’re also looking for that star quality — the thing that makes them shine above everyone else. It’s almost something you can’t explain, but we know it when we see it.”

Season 2’s cast includes a former NFL player for the Green Bay Packers, a few actors, and a realtor. The 10 men compete in weekly festive-themed acting challenges, one of which included having to ride a horse and act out a scene with Alison Sweeney. The contestants were chosen from a crop of 360 potential men, and Bennett gives kudos to the show’s Emmy-nominated casting director, Lindsay Liles (The Bachelor, Bachelor in Paradise).

“She has a tough job because she has to find 10 guys that are going to be good reality television, but also have the talent to act, carry a scene, and lead a Hallmark movie eventually,” he says. To be the right fit for a Hallmark leading man, Bennett singles out five key characteristics: you have to be funny, charming, kind, have a sense of humor, and you have to do it all with a big heart.

Of course, Finding Mr. Christmas wouldn’t be Finding Mr. Christmas without its signature eye candy — something Bennett describes as “part of the job” for the contestants. “I can’t believe Hallmark let me get away with this. I dressed them as sexy reindeer and put them in harnesses attached to a cable 30 feet in the air, and they had to do a sexy reindeer photo shoot challenge,” he says with a laugh. “This season is just bigger and bolder than last. People are responding to not only all the craziness that we put them through, but also comparing and contrasting the guys in their acting scenes when we do them back-to-back.”

Season 1 winner Ezra Moreland’s career has been an early testament to the show’s success at finding rising talent. On seeing the show’s first winner flourish, Bennett says, “Now to watch him out in the world, just booking commercial after commercial and shining as an actor and a model, I think the show gave him the wings to do that. He learned so much about himself, and he took all that into his future auditions and casting. He just works nonstop. I’ve never seen an actor book more commercials and modeling gigs in my life.”

Bennett has been a star of plenty of Hallmark movies himself, including the GLAAD-award-winning The Groomsmen: Second Chances, which makes him a fitting host. Among those movies are 2020’s Christmas House, which featured the first same-sex kiss on the network and had a major impact on Bennett’s career as an openly gay man. “Hallmark’s been so great about supporting me in queer storytelling. But again, I don’t make gay movies for gay audiences. I make gay love stories for a broad audience, and that’s a huge difference, right? We’re not telling stories inside baseball that only the gay community will understand.”

He continues, “The backdrop of a Hallmark Christmas movie is very familiar to these people who watch. And so when you tell a gay love story, and you tell it no differently than a straight love story in that space, they’re able to understand. It’s able to change hearts and minds for people who might not have it in their lives.”

While Hallmark has become a major staple of Bennett’s career, he started off wanting to be a Broadway actor. And before the first season of Finding Mr. Christmas aired, Bennett took a break from TV to make his Broadway debut in Spamalot, replacing Michael Urie as Sir Robin and starring alongside Ethan Slater and Alex Brightman.

“That was my dream since I was five years old – then I booked a movie called Mean Girls, and everything kind of changes in your life. You no longer become a person pursuing Broadway, you become a part of pop culture,” Bennett recalls. “And to be honest, when I hit 40, I was like, ‘I’m probably never going to get to live that dream.’ And that’s okay, because I got to do other dreams and other things that were just as cool but different. So I honestly never thought it would happen.”

Bennett is still determined to make his way back on Broadway with the right role — he calls Spamalot the “best experience” of his life, after all — but he’s got another Hallmark show lined up with Murder Mystery House, which he co-created. The show was recently greenlit for development and intends to bring the Hallmark mystery movie to life. “It’s kind of like our version of The Traitors,” Bennett admits.

Looking back on both seasons, Bennett says that what makes Finding Mr. Christmas stand out in the overcrowded reality TV landscape is that everyone involved makes it with heart: “This isn’t a show where you’re going to watch people throw drinks in each other’s faces and get into big fights. The thing that has amazed me so much about this show, the more we’ve done it, is that every season, 10 guys come in as competitors, but they leave as a family and as brothers. That’s something you don’t get on any other network.”

Finding Mr. Christmas airs every Monday on Hallmark through December 20, with episodes available to stream on Hallmark+.