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Christmas is coming, The goose is getting fat! For the December competition, I would love a Christmas story. The theme is Christmas in any way, shape, or form. Make it sad, make it happy, naughty or nice. Make it ghostly if that tickles your fancy. Make it commercial or spiritual. Feel free.
550 words max as it’s Christmas. Entries by the end of New Years Eve.
Nativity Mystery – A lighthearted tale
540 words excluding title
Miss Farthing sighed wearily and then screamed ‘Be quiet!’ She could stand it no longer. This was the last rehearsal of the Nativity play at Priory Primary School before the performance in front of parents and governors and it was utter chaos. Some children had swapped costumes. Now shepherds were wise men and vice versa. Joseph and Mary had exchanged head dresses as a joke. No-one was keeping to their designated places and there was much giggling. The supposedly sensible narrator – a boy in his final year – was nowhere to be seen.
The shock of hearing the usually calm Miss Farthing shouting so loudly did bring quiet to the assembly and a shame faced narrator from behind a side curtain.
The teacher adopted her sternest voice to bring them to order. She almost pleaded, but not quite, even though she had been near to tears. They took a break to calm down and to give the mis-dressers time to change into their own costumes. The narrator managed to stop his hiccups which had been brought on by his stifled laughter.
Finally, all were back on stage and this time the dress rehearsal went smoothly and Miss Farthing regained hope that all would be well on the afternoon.
All was to go well with the play itself, but Miss Farthing could not have foreseen the strange happening at the end of the afternoon.
Parents, governors and teachers filed into the hall on Friday afternoon, the last day of school before the holidays. They took their seats – rather hard wooden chairs – and settled down, anticipating an uplifting performance.
Behind the curtains Miss Farthing was giving a pep talk as the children took their allotted places. The baby doll was nestled in the wooden crib. Joseph stood proudly beside a seated Mary, who wore a beatific smile quite different from her usual impish demeanour.
Miss Farthing exited into the wings as the curtains went up. There was a round of quiet applause from the audience, because the scene on stage was indeed enchanting.
All went splendidly and there was great applause as the Nativity play came to an end. Then Miss Farthing stepped forward to the front of the stage and invited the audience to join in a Christmas carol to end the afternoon on a jolly note. The lyric sheets for Jingle Bells were under their chairs.
The children stood up, Mary cradling the doll in her arms. The music began – Mrs Lovatt at the piano and Mr Grimes wielding bells to ring at the appropriate moments.
More applause and laughter before a moment of silence into which a baby’s cry penetrated. The school head had requested that only adults should attend. Miss Farthing scratched her head. The crying was coming from behind her. She turned and there in the crib was a baby.
She lifted the tiny boy to show everyone and, from the back of the hall came a cry of astonishment.
‘That’s my little Henry! How did he get there? I left him at home with my mother!’
She dashed forward to retrieve the child.
No-one could answer her question, but all agreed it was a Christmas Miracle or perhaps just a Christmas Mystery which would remain unsolved.
Running the Christmas Gauntlet
Brace yourself, girl. Everywhere is going to be madness today. Most of the throng will be feeling much the same way … which means shouting and kids screaming; means shoving and pushing … but take a deep breath. Concentrate on the list. You’ve successfully run the Christmas shopping gauntlet before.
The vegetable aisle greets me with an abundance of colour. Carrots, spuds, parsnips – tick. Hell, will it really ruin Christmas should I ‘forget’ the sprouts? The air would be sweeter, much as Dad likes his musical farting competitions.
Oh, get them in the trolley and stop whinging.Bakery next. Hey, those mince pies could be passed off as homemade at a stretch. I could call them my secret recipe. Mustn’t forget fruitcake either, marzipan picked off for his-nibs: more for yours truly.
Cans – tick; packets (not forgetting Paxo) – tick; cheeses in pretty boxes at twice the price – tick. Appetizers … but who wants a battered prawn on a stick? A mini pie with pea topping? – before Turkey – really? And for how much? Brussels pate on Ritz it is and you can shut your mouth, Santa. This part is my show.
The trolley mountain rises. I’d like nothing better than to uninvite Aunt Belinda and Uncle Gary, who insist on seeing Mum and Dad on the big day, at my expense of course. With them come Paula and their grandchildren, who join my terrors in racing round the sofa, sneaking drinks, the cheeky little sods.
Aw, come on, Mrs Grinch, get into the spirit of Christmas.
Talking of spirits, I’d best replace that bottle of cheap Baileys and the spiced rum that his-nibs claimed to have sprung a leak. My phone pings. Mum: can I get in some what? Advocaat? I’d tell her it’s sold out, but to whom? The guy next to me is arguing the same. The rest of us have been hearing their domestic from the frozen aisle on.
Oh no! To cap it all, I’ve been *Whammed!
I see others playing the same game and laugh with them.Yeah, let’s laugh at each other. At ourselves.
That’s right, missus, bring on the visitors – isn’t this about joy and togetherness after all?386 words
* challenge is to avoid hearing ‘Last Christmas’ for as long as possible (if at all).
A never-forgotten Christmas
The telegram sent by my new-made grandfather, telling my father of my safe arrival, at five minutes to midnight on the twentieth December (and, according to my great-grandfather’s fish scales, weighing 6lbs 4 ozs) is explanation enough of why I don’t remember my first Christmas.
To establish whether it was my second or third Christmas I’d have to do some research on the comparative height of dining tables and eyelines of ‘tall for her age’ two and three year-olds to be sure which it was I have such a strong and still vivid, both visual and emotional memory of. Not just of the dining table, nor of the pile upon it, (as tall again as me) of a multitude of pretty-wrapped parcels. Nor is my memory merely visual, because, sandwiched between table and the semi-circle of suspense-filled, adoring, anticipatory aunt, grandparents I was strongly aware of the weight of expectation; the requirement for me to react appropriately. And also of the presence of my mother, from whom I sensed a complexity of disapproval, of resistance, of unhappiness, familiar as ever as yet another skirmish in the ever-present rivalry for my attention. An ill-tempered, resentful battle, begun from when my father, newly discharged from the RAF declared his intention to marry my mother, exacerbated when poverty, through lack of employment necessitated his moving wife and child (soon children) into their house to live.) .
All of which, ever familiar, flicked through my head, to be speedily dismissed. I can only add that I have not the faintest memory of unwrapping any of the pretty paper, nor what gifts it concealed, but I can still conjure that first impression of surprised curiosity. And being surrounded by love. [285 words]
Still a few days to go and i am on it, honestly , Ath.
After a hectic but lovely build up to xmas and a family orientated day yesterday I settled down about half an hour ago to try and finish my offering. ……. son was carrying a very large bucket of soapy wash water out to the drive to clean his motorbike when the whole thing split open and dumped the water all ways to the underworld over my 6 month old wooden kitchen floor.
Major panic from son and the last twenty minutes paddling a bout in about half an inch of water amid all the bathtowels we could find floating down the stairs like big birds – plus a string of unrepeatable words from my son. Nevera dull one here … a bit damp but thankfully all sorted and just have a huge pile of bathtowels to wash.
Back to the December challenge now .
Lord of Yule
Riann contemplated her decision of allowing the snow-covered stranger, now tending the fire, into her cottage. His ice-sprinkled cloak and hood hung at one side of the fire’s mantle, a puddle forming below it, while his boots and mittens lay close to the hearth.
He hadn’t actually set her senses tingling with alarm but there was a practiced timelessness in his movement. The easy way he wriggled his bare feet toward the warmth and the earthy tone of his voice accompanying the old look in his eyes hinted of ancient power and wisdom.
It made her skin prickle in the strangest way.
His eyes were hypnotic, dark brown, almost black, but she could see flashes of gold in his gaze making him seem, both old and young at the same time.
Darkly inked marks on his hands crept over his wrist and coiled under the sleeves of his tunic. Similar markings spiralled about his feet and ankles. Firelight dancing across his face cast shadows about his shoulders making his hair, silver-threaded against dark, seem to curl toward the warmth and, as he leaned forward, poking at the crackling logs, his beard almost touched the floor.
They’d been discussing Yuletide and the turning of the year. He glanced across at her. ‘I’m not saying the legend of Christian faith is unfounded, for it is true, but the Christ mass celebration hides something older, unfathomable, something rooted deep within the earth itself.’
Riann breathed softly, ‘the Old Ones, and the old ways. Those stories have been in my family for generations,’
‘Ahh I knew I was right, the faeborn scent is unmistakable.’ He looked her squarely in the eyes and the flash of gold was unmistakable.
Riann noticed, with unsettling clarity, his hair snaking and curling into the semblance of a crown over his brows. Suspicion twisted in the pit of her belly and unease curled with it.
‘What are you?’ A pointless question because she already knew the answer.
‘Come now lady, faeborn always recognises faeborn, we sense it in our blood and the very, earth, air and water that sustains us. Your question should be “who am I”.’
There was a pause, ‘Who are you, then?’ her voice was quiet.
He laughed, an easy, hearty, laugh, ‘I have many names. My favourite though is Kern. I bid farewell to the old and herald in the new.’
Riann stood. The inky marks on his feet were moving now, sprouting and creeping in tendrils, across the floor toward his boots. She stepped backward, ‘Cernunnos, Two-faced hunter, horned one.’ It was not a question but a whispered truth.
‘Those too,’ one bushy eyebrow raised and a faint smile caught the corner of his mouth, ‘I was passing, your quiet scent intrigued me, it has been long since I sensed faeborn in this world.’
Riann’s voice came out as a breathy hiss. ‘I am not faeborn’
‘You are muted, and spell-tangled but definitely faeborn. Even your name, in the old tongue, means great queen or goddess.’
She looked shocked, ‘How?’
He shrugged, ‘Ancient spell-binding of bloodlines, it happens.’
Vines from his boots, his cloak and from Kern, himself stole up the walls and across the ceiling in thickening branches.
‘I’m afraid.’ Riann whispered.
‘Don’t be,’ his hand closed over hers, ‘you’re coming home.’
550
OK, it’s a fraction after midnight so 2026. I’ve read them all. They’re annoyingly good. So sorry, you can all wait until tomorrow is well and truly underway. Happy New Year!
Right, here we go.
Is there anybody who hasn’t had at least a small part in the production of a nativity play? Jill, that’s just how they go. A perfect evocation. And your story has a Christmas miracle as well – or was it a mischievous young actor?
Janette, I was there in that supermarket. No, really, I was actually there I think, barging past the shoppers and, worst of all, the personal shoppers with their massive trolleys parked right over the exact spot I needed to reach. Jona Lewie was diddle-diddle-dumming and I prayed it wouldn’t change to Wham!
Sandra, a snippet of reality and a view into the past. Really moving. Those memories that fade and change over the years but never really leave us. I very much enjoyed that.
Terrie, you made it! And you’ve blended a bit of this and a piece of that, some fact and some, well let’s not say fiction, let’s say imagination. The festivals of the old world may have been hijacked by the Romans as convenient dates, but it’s facinating to speculate on just what those old traditions meant.
As I said, I read all these last night, or rather, early this morning. I awarded each one first place at some point, but I have to make a decision. Terrie, take us into the next 12 months.
And a Very Happy New Year to us all!
Well done Terrie, and everyone else who between them provided a kaleidoscope view of Christmas, and thank you Ath for prompting me into putting a long-held memory into words.
Well done,Terrie. Look forward to your challenge for January. Enjoyed each entry very much. Thank you, Athelstone for your kind comment on my contribution, which was fun to create! Wishing you all a Very Happy and Healthy, Creative New Year. Jill x
Well done Jill, Janette and Sandra , December comps always seem to be more of a challenge as most of us are usually busy with other things.
Thank you for the chance to set the January comp Ath.
Sorry was busy yesterday and forgot to pop in to see the results . I will post the January challenge as soon as I come up with one . Definitely by the end of today though.
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