Merry Christmas

[me9996]

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

[Tessar]

It's not Christmas yet.

BAH HUMBUG!

[Curubethion]

Ah cmon it's close enough!
(beware the ghost of PC...)

[Drgnslyer]

humbug this
*if you dare to read it*

Five minutes before the Winter Solstice circle was scheduled to
begin, my mother called. Since I'm the only one in our coven who
doesn't run on Pagan Standard Time, I took the call. Half the people
hadn't arrived, and those who had wouldn't settle down to business
for at least twenty minutes.

"Merry Christmas, Dave."

"Hi, Mum. I don't do Christmas."

"Maybe not, but I do, so I'll say it," she told me in her sassy
voice, kind of sweet and vinegary at the same time. "If I can
respect your freedom of religion, you can respect my freedom of
speech."

I grinned and rolled my eyes. "And the score is Mum -one, Dave -
nothing. But I love you, anyway."

People were bustling around in the next room, setting up the altar,
decking the halls with what I considered excessive amounts of holly
and ivy, and singing something like, "O, Solstice Tree."

"It sounds like a...holiday party." Mom said.

"We're doing Winter Solstice tonight."

"Oh. That's sort of like your version of Christmas, right?"

I wanted to snap back that Christmas was the Christian version of
Solstice, but I held back.

"We celebrate the return of the sun. It's a lot quieter than
Christmas. No shopping sprees, no pine needles, no tinsel, and it
doesn't wipe me out. I remember how you had always worked yourself
to a frazzle by December 26."

"Oh honey, I loved doing all that stuff. I wouldn't trade those
memories for all the spare time in the world. I wish you and Eve
would loosen up a little. When you were little, you enjoyed Easter
bunnies and trick-or-treating and Christmas things. Since you've
gotten into this Wicca religion, you sound a lot like Aunt Betty the
year she was a Jehovah's Witness."

I laughed nervously. "Yeah. How is Aunt Betty?"

"Fine. She's into the Celestine Prophecy now, and she seems quite
happy. Y'know," she went on, "Aunt Betty always said the Jehovah's
Witnesses said those holiday things were Pagan. So I don't see why
you've given them up."

"Uh, they've been commercialized and polluted beyond recognition.
We're into very simple, quiet celebrations."

"Well," she said dubiously, "as long as you're happy."

Sometimes long distance is better than being there, 'cause your
mother can't give you the look that makes you agree with everything
she says. Eve rescued me by interrupting.

Hi, Ma." she called to the phone as she waved a beribboned sprig of
mistletoe over my head. Then she kissed me, one of those quick noisy
ones. I frowned at
her.

"Druidic tradition, Dave. Swear to Goddess."

"Of course it is. Did the Druids pick mistletoe from MY apple tree?"

"Always. We'll be needing you in about five minutes."

"Okay. Got to go, Mum. Love you."

We had a nice, serene kind of Solstice Circle. No jingling bells or
worn-out Christmas Carols. Soon after the last coven member left,
Eve was ready to pack it in.

"The baby's nestled all snug in her bed," she said with a yawn, "I
think I'll go settle in for a long winter's nap."

I heaved a martyred sigh. She grinned unrepentantly, kissed me,
called me a grinch, and went to bed. I stayed up and puttered around
the house, trying to unwind. I sifted through the day's mail,
ditched the flyers urging us to get a new credit card to purchase
all the Seasonal Joy we could afford.

I opened the card from Eve's parents. Another sermon: a manger scene
and a bible verse, with a handwritten note expressing her mother's
fervent hope
that God's love and Christmas spirit would fill our hearts in this
blessed season. She means well, really. I amused myself by picking
out every Pagan element I could find in the card.

When the mail had been sorted, I got up and started turning our
ritual room back into a living room. As if the greeting card had
carried a virus, I found myself humming Christmas carols. I turned
on the classic rock station, but they were playing that Lennon-Ono
Christmas song. I switched stations.

The weatherman assured me that there was only a twenty percent
chance of snow. Then, by Loki, the deejay let Bruce Springsteen
insult my ears crooning, "yah better watch out, yah better not
pout." I tried the Oldies station. Elvis lives and he does Christmas
songs. Okay, fine. We'll do classical ~ no, we won't. They're
playing Handel's Messiah. Maybe the community radio station would
have something secular humanist.

"Ahora, escucharemos a Jose Feliciano canta `Feliz Navidad'."

I was getting annoyed. The radio doesn't usually get this saturated
with holiday mush until the twenty-fourth.

"This is too weird." I said to the radio, "Cut that crap out."

The country station had some Kenny Rogers Christmas tune, the first
rock station had gone from John and Yoko's Christmas song to Simon
and Garfunkel's "Silent Night," and the other rock station still had
Springsteen reliving his childhood. "--I'm tellin' you why. Santa
Claus is comin' to town!" he bellowed.

I was about to pick out a nice secular CD when there was a knock at
the door. Now, it could have been a coven member who'd forgotten
something. It could have been someone with car trouble. It could
have been any number of things, but it certainly couldn't have been
a stout guy in a red suit—snowy beard, rosy cheeks, and all--backed
by eight reindeer and a sleigh. I blinked, wondered crazily where
Rudolph was, and blinked again. There were nine reindeer. Our twenty-
percent chance of snow had frosted the dead grass and was continuing
to float down in fat flakes.

"Hi, Dave." he said warmly, "I've missed you."

"I'm stone cold sober, and you don't exist."

He looked at me with a mixture of sorrow and compassion and sighed
heavily.

"That's why I miss you, Dave. Can I come in? We need to talk."

I couldn't quite bring myself to slam the door on this vision,
hallucination, or whatever. So I let him in, because that made more
sense then letting all the cold air in while I argued with someone
who wasn't there.

As he stepped in, a thought crossed my mind about various entities
needing an invitation to get in houses. He flashed me a smile that
would melt the polar caps.

"Don't you miss Christmas, Dave?"

"No." I said flatly, "Apparently you don't see me when I'm sleeping
and waking these days. I haven't been Christian for years."

"Oh, now don't let that stop you. We both know this holiday's older
than that. Yule trees and Saturnalia and here-comes-the-sun,
doodoodendoodoo."

I raised an eyebrow at the Beatles reference, and then gave him my
standard sermon on the appropriation and adulteration that made
Christmas no longer a Pagan holiday. I had done my homework. I
listed centuries; I named names -St. Nicholas among them.

"In the twentieth century version," I assured him, "Christmas is two
parts crass commercialism mixed with one part blind faith in a
religion I rejected years ago." I gave him my best lines, the ones
that had convinced my coven to abstain from Christmassy clichés. My
hallucination sat in Eve's favourite
chair, nodding patiently at me.

"And you," I added nastily, "come here talking about ancient customs
when you--in your current form--were invented in the nineteenth
century by, um...Clement C. Moore."

He laughed a rolling, belly-deep chuckle unlike any department-store
Santa I'd ever heard.

"Of course I change my form now and then to suit fashion. Don't you?
And does that stop you from being yourself?" He said, and asked me
if I remembered Real Magic, by Isaac Bonewits.

I gaped at him for a moment, and then caught myself. "This is like
`Labyrinth', right? I'm having a dream that pretends to be real, but
is only made from pieces of things in my memory. You don't look a
thing like David Bowie."

"Bonewits has this Switchboard Theory." Santa went on amiably, "The
energy you put into your beliefs influences the real existence of
the archetypal--oh, let me put it simpler: `in the beginning, Man
created God'.
Ian Anderson."

He lit a long-stemmed pipe. The tobacco had a mild and somehow
Christmassy smell, and every puff sent up a wreath of smoke. "I'm
afraid it's a bit more complicated than Bonewits tells it, but
that's close enough for mortals. Are you with me so far?"

"Oh, sure." I lied as unconvincingly as possible.

Santa sighed heavily.

"When's the last time you left out Sherry and Mince Pies for me?"

"When I figured out my parents were eating them."

"Dave, Dave. Remember pinda balls, from Hinduism?"

"Rice balls left as offerings for ancestors and gods."

"Do Hindus really believe that the ancestors and gods eat pinda
balls?"

"All right, y'got me there. They say that spirits consume the
spiritual essence, and then mortals can have what's left."

"Mm-hm." Santa smiled at me compassionately through his snowy beard.

I rallied quickly. "What about the toys? I know for a fact they
aren't made by you and a bunch of non-union Elves."

"Oh, that's quite true. Manufacturing physical objects out of
magical energy is terribly expensive and breaks several laws of
Nature--She only allows us to do that on special occasions. It
certainly couldn't be done globally and annually. Now, the missus
and the Elves and I really do have a shop at the North Pole. Not the
sort of thing the Air Force would ever find. What we make up there
is what makes this time a holiday, no matter what religion it's
called."

"Don't tell me," I said, rolling my eyes, "you make the sun come
back."

"Oh my, no. The solar cycle stuff, the Reason For The Season, isn't
my department. My part is making it a holiday. We make a mild, non-
addictive psychedelic thing called Christmas spirit. Try some."

He dipped his fingers in a pocket and tossed red-gold-green-silver
glitter at me. I could have ducked. I don't know why I didn't.

It smelled like snow and pine needles, and cedar chips in the
fireplace. It smelled like fruitcake, savoury herbal stuffing, like
that foamy white stuff you spray on the window with stencils. It
felt like a crisp wind, Grandma's hugs, fuzzy new mittens, pine
needles scrunching under my slippers. I saw twinkly lights,
mistletoe in the doorway, smiling faces from years gone by. Several
Christmas carols played almost simultaneously in a kind of medley. I
fought my way back to my living room and glared sternly at
the hallucination in Eve's chair.

"Fun stuff. Does the DEA know about this?"

"Oh, Dave. Why are you such a hard case? I told you it's non-
addictive and has no harmful side effects. Would Santa Claus lie to
you?"

I opened my mouth and closed it again. We looked at each other a
while.

"Can I have some more of that glittery stuff?"

"Mmmm. I think you need something stronger. Try a sugarplum."

I tasted rum ball. Peppermint. Those hard sugar sticks with the
words all the way through, my favourite fudge. A chorus line of
Christmas sweets danced through my mouth. The Swedish Angel Chimes,
run on candle power, say tingatingatingating. Mum, with a funny
smile, promised to give Santa my letter.

Greeting cards taped on the refrigerator door. We rode through the
tree farm on a straw-filled trailer pulled by a red and green
tractor, looking for a perfect pine. It was so big; Dad had to cut a
bit off so the star wouldn't scrape the ceiling. Lights, ornaments,
tinsel. Dad lifted me up to the mantle to hang my stocking. My toy
soldiers stayed up to see Santa Claus, and in the morning they all
had new clothes. Grandma carried in platters with the world's
biggest Christmas dinner. Janie's Christmas puppy chased my
Christmas kitten up the tree and it would have fallen over but Dad
held it while Mum got the kitten out. Dad said every bad word there
was but he kept laughing anyway. I sneaked my favourite plastic
horse into the nativity scene, between the camels and the donkey.

I came back to reality slowly, with a silly smile on my face and a
tickly feeling behind my eyes like they wanted to cry. The
phrase "visions of sugarplums" took on a whole new meaning.

"How long has it been," Santa asked, "since you played with a
nativity set?-"

"But it symbolizes--"

"The winter-born king. The sacred Mother and her sun-child. Got a
problem with that? You could redecorate it with pentagrams if you
like, they'll look
fine. As for the Christianization, I've heard who you invoke at
Imbolc."

"But Bridgid was a Goddess for centuries before the Catholic Church-
oh." I crossed my arms and tried to glare at him, but
failed. "You're a sneaky old Elf, y'know?"

"The term is `jolly old Elf.' Care for another sugarplum?"

I did. I tasted gingerbread. My first nip of soy eggnog the way the
grown-ups drink it. Fresh sugar cookies shaped like trees and decked
with coloured icing. Dad had been laid off, but we managed a lot of
cheer. They told us Christmas would be "slim pickings." Janie and I
smiled bravely when Mum brought home that spindly spruce. We loaded
down our "Charlie Brown Christmas Tree" with every light and
ornament it could hold. Popcorn and cranberry strings for the
outdoor trees. Mistletoe in the hall: plastic mistletoe, real
kisses. Janie and I snipped and glued and stitched and painted
treasures to give as presents.

We agonized over our "Santa" letters...by now we knew where the
goodies came from, and we tried to compromise between what we longed
for and they thought they could afford. Every day we hoped the
factory would reopen. When Janie's dog ate my glove, I wasn't brave.
I knew that meant I'd get gloves for
Christmas, and one less toy. I cried. On December twenty-fifth we
opened our presents ve-ery slo-wly, drawing out the experience. We
made a show of cheer
over our socks and shirts and meagre haul of toys. I got red gloves.
We could tell Mum and Dad were proud of us for being so brave,
because they were grinning like crazy.

"Go out to the garage for apples." Mama told us, "We'll have apple
pancakes."

I don't remember having the pancakes. There was a dollhouse in the
garage. No mass-produced aluminium thing but a homemade plywood
dollhouse with wall-papered walls and real curtains and thread-spool
chairs. Janie's dolls were inside, with newly sewn clothes. I was on
my knees in front of a plywood
barn with hay in the loft. My old farm implements had new paint. Our
plastic animals were corralled in stick fences. The garage smelled
like apples and hay, the cement was bone-chilling under my slippers,
and I was crying.

My knees were drawn up to my chest, arms wrapped around them. My
chest felt tight, like ice cracking in sunshine. Santa offered me a
huge white handkerchief. When all the ice in my chest had melted, he
cleared his throat. He was pretty misty-eyed, too.

"Want to come sit on my lap and tell me what you want for Christmas?"

"You've already given it to me." But I sat on his lap anyway, and
kissed his rosy cheek until he did his famous laugh.

"I'd better go now, Dave. I have other stops to make, and you have
work to do."

"Right. I'd better pop the corn tonight; it strings best when it's
stale."

I let him out the door. The reindeer were pawing impatiently at the
moon-kissed new-fallen snow. I'd swear Rudolph winked at me.

"Don't forget the Sherry and mince pies."

"Right. Uh, December twenty-fourth, or Solstice, or what?"

He shrugged. "Whatever night you expect me, I'll be there. Eh, don't
wait up. Visits like this are tightly rationed. Laws of Nature,
y'know, and She's strict with them."

"Gotcha. Thanks, Santa." I kissed his cheek again. "Happy Christmas."

The phrase had a nice, non-denominational ring to it. I thought I'd
call my parents and in-laws soon and try it out on them.

Santa laid his finger aside of his nose and nodded.

"Blessed be, Dave."

The sleigh soared up, and Santa really did exclaim something. It
sounded like old German. Smart-aleck Elf.

When I closed the door, the radio was playing Jethro
Tull's "Solstice Bells."

Happy Whatever...!!!

[littleadanel]

I LOVED this story, Drgnslayer (why didn't it update the thread? Hope my post will.)

Happy Whatever...!!! (Christmas for me)

[me9996]

Merry Christmas to ALL and to ALL a good night.

[rohirrim TR]

Merry Christmas To ALL

[Lotesse]

At first, when I saw the title of this little thread, I thought to myself, 'Fine, I'll just pop in real quick & bah humbug this silliness,' but then I read that AWEsome little story, and the part about how she remembers that dollhouse that her parents refurbished got me actually slightly crying. Wow. DAMN good story!!! It instantly reminded me of being a child, with my family, those old Christmases past so long ago, memories I've buried so deep but then there it was again. Reminded me of how much I love & miss my family. No bah humbug; Happy Christmas you guys!

[rohirrim TR]

and a very joyful, happy, and last but not least MERRY CHRISTMAS to you.

[Lotesse]

Xmas 2 U 2!!

[Elanor]

That story reminds me of an article I read: How "Merry Christmas" became "Happy Holidays". I think it's good to be aware of the holidays of the people we live with and help them celebrate, no matter how or what we celebrate ourselves. Merry Christmas to all of you.

[Spock]

OK, but first is Festivus!

[rohirrim TR]

oh hey great story drgnslayer, i just finished reading it, couldn't see it before for some reason, anyway really funny, but true, no matter how cynical you are, christmas will bring out the best memories.

[Rían]

Merry Christmas to everyone that celebrates it

To me, it means the long-awaited, promised coming of Emmanuel, which means "God with us" - it's so cool to me that the creator of the universe would come into our world in order to be with us in a way that we could comprehend I don't know which holiday I like better - Easter or Christmas - I love them both

[me9996]

And merry christmas to everone who doesn't celebrate it too!

[me9996]

My little brother wants to say Merry Christmas too.

[Master'sBaneSwiftSnowmane]

I think it's amusing how far the school systems have taken this Merry Christmas buisness.

Example: My Honors English prof. was "chastised" the other day for having a Christmas tree in her class room. So, she took it down for the rest of that day. Class started again the next day and the tree was there. Only this time, it included a menorah, the Islamic cresent, etc. Well, the headmaster stalks in (I can only assume that the class has a squeler) and opens his mouth (his face was purple...it was hilarious!) but before he could say a word she whips out one of our War and Peace handbooks and reads to him, "Article something or other section this and that states, and I quote, that the staff may chose to decorate the school in any manner of their choosing so long as it is not discriminatory to any one person, religion, or way of life." The headmaster glared at the tree for the longest time and then stalked out of the room. But, I know that he didn't get far enough down the hall to not hear the room explode with the noise of twenty-three clapping teens.

[cee2lee2]

Wonder-full story, Drgnslyer!

And a Happy (insert your holiday here) to all!!!!

[rohirrim TR]

Feliz Navidad and

Merry Christmas!

[inked]

May the Mass of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus bar Joseph of Nazareth be filled with blessings as you make anamnesis of the Incarnation of the Lord of Glory!

Or, in the vernacular, MERRY CHRISTMAS!