Hornecker’s own parents divorced when he was nine, and overnight he was expected to support his mother in a small council house in Hertfordshire. He’s become an instinctively parental figure to many in the scene, and his space has allowed people like Le Grand to engage with Christmas on their own terms, away from the nausea of shattered marriages and judgemental relations. “I love Christmas now,” they say. “And all of the crap that comes with it. The decorations, the songs, the films, all of it.”
The others, too, have a complicated relationship with home. After losing his mother not long before the pandemic began, Rhys’Pieces had to take over the running of his family home in London’s Hackney, in tandem with his career as a performer. “It’s nice to have my chosen family here, as well as my sisters back home,” he says.
