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    Christmas Stories: or What Christmas Means to Me
    Christmas Stories: or What Christmas Means to Me
    Christmas Stories: or What Christmas Means to Me
    Ebook175 pages2 hours

    Christmas Stories: or What Christmas Means to Me

    By Barry Pomeroy

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    About this ebook

    What Christmas Means to Me: Nine stories and Three Essays
    The Christmas Season – Why don’t we value Grinch and Scrooge for themselves instead of the presents they bring? A lighthearted look at materialism and the media.
    The Christmas Tree Embargo – What if Canada cut off trees to the United States? Follow the chaos and delight that comes about as a result of the Christmas tree embargo.
    Burning Richard – For some, Christmas is a time of rare opportunity. Cindy has been planning for her holiday season for years, and if everything goes right, her life will completely change with the new year.
    A Gamer’s Christmas – Evan had the season wrapped up in his own dreams of giving, but when a present drops into his lap he realizes how paltry his dreams had been.
    The Goods on Christmas – The story of a Christmas in-law visit gone horribly wrong in the breathless voice of the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. This is as much a treatise on North American Christmas celebrations as it is a story about a particularly cold mother-in-law matched only by the frigidity of the northern winter.
    Giving in the Holiday Season – A plea from that most endangered species, the penniless professor. A tongue and cheek look at contract work in the paper mines.
    The Crèche Artist – Dianne’s favourite season is Christmas and her favourite task building crèches. Perhaps that’s why she is horrified to learn that someone is subtly vandalizing her work to make a strangely significant statement.
    They’re Dreaming of a Non-White Christmas – What if Aboriginal people woke up on Christmas morning with the greatest present of all? A story as much about our history as it is about our present.
    Alone for the Holidays – Being alone at the most family of seasons is bad enough for most people, but for Ben, who sought solitude all of the year, Christmas had always been a nightmare of cheer and good will. This year would be different.
    What Did Santa Bring Me this Year? – A meditation on materialism as much as it is about invisible gods, this polemic explores the connections between one fanciful story and another.
    Christmas is Totally Ruined – When a girl loses her brother on Christmas, her reaction is anything but in tune with the season.
    The Best Present Ever – When Frank wants to give his remote daughter the best Christmas he can, he labours for days just to see his daughter’s face light up as she sees the best present ever.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarry Pomeroy
    Release dateDec 7, 2014
    ISBN9781311030979
    Christmas Stories: or What Christmas Means to Me
    Author

    Barry Pomeroy

    Barry Pomeroy is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, academic, essayist, travel writer, and editor. He is primarily interested in science fiction, speculative science fiction, dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, although he has also written travelogues, poetry, book-length academic treatments, and more literary novels. His other interests range from astrophysics to materials science, from child-rearing to construction, from cognitive therapy to paleoanthropology.

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      Book preview

      Christmas Stories - Barry Pomeroy

      Christmas Stories

      Or What Christmas Means to Me

      by

      Barry Pomeroy

      © 2015 by Barry Pomeroy

      All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan-American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author, although people generally do what they please.

      For more information on my books, go to barrypomeroy.com

      ISBN 13: 9781987922219

      ISBN 10: 1987922219

      Table of Contents

      What Christmas Means to Me

      The Christmas Season

      The Christmas Tree Embargo

      Burning Richard

      A Gamer’s Christmas

      The Goods on Christmas

      Giving in the Holiday Season

      The Crèche Artist

      They’re Dreaming of a Non-White Christmas

      Alone for the Holidays

      What Did Santa Bring Me this Year?

      Christmas is Totally Ruined

      The Best Present Ever

      What Christmas Means to Me

      In the west, Christmas is a season weighted with expectation. We tie every family obligation, every regret and disdainful look, to the fragile boat of Christmas until the thwarts are covered, the deck dangerous to traverse and the gunwales in danger of shipping water. Then, with no attention on the possible shoals and reefs of seasonal depression and family feuding, we wish most desperately for our better nature to the come to the fore. We ask the season foundering with our hopes and dreams to weather the hurricane of a child’s simple delight and slip over the soft gravel bar of half-uttered endearments.

      With these stories I have tried to capture the materialistic urges, the chaos and family delight, the chance for vindication and escape from the frigid cold of family relations, the wish to spread the seasonal franchise, the connection to the invisible and fantastic, the devastation of children and their caregivers, and finally, presents.

      The Christmas Season – Why don’t we value Grinch and Scrooge for themselves instead of the presents they bring? A lighthearted look at materialism and the media.

      The Christmas Tree Embargo – What if Canada cut off trees to the United States? Follow the chaos and delight that comes about as a result of the Christmas tree embargo.

      Burning Richard – For some, Christmas is a time of rare opportunity. Cindy has been planning for her holiday season for years, and if everything goes right, her life will completely change with the new year.

      A Gamer’s Christmas – Evan had the season wrapped up in his own dreams of giving, but when a present drops into his lap he realizes how paltry his dreams had been.

      The Goods on Christmas – The story of a Christmas in-law visit gone horribly wrong in the breathless voice of the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. This is as much a treatise on North American Christmas celebrations as it is a story about a particularly cold mother-in-law matched only by the frigidity of the northern winter.

      Giving in the Holiday Season – A plea from that most endangered species, the penniless professor. A tongue and cheek look at contract work in the paper mines.

      The Crèche Artist – Dianne’s favourite season is Christmas and her favourite task building crèches. Perhaps that’s why she is horrified to learn that someone is subtly vandalizing her work to make a strangely significant statement.

      They’re Dreaming of a Non-White Christmas – What if Aboriginal people woke up on Christmas morning with the greatest present of all? A story as much about our history as it is about our present.

      Alone for the Holidays – Being alone at the most family of seasons is bad enough for most people, but for Ben, who sought solitude all of the year, Christmas had always been a nightmare of cheer and good will. This year would be different.

      What Did Santa Bring Me this Year? – A meditation on materialism as much as it is about invisible gods, this polemic explores the connections between one fanciful story and another.

      Christmas is Totally Ruined – When a girl loses her brother on Christmas, her reaction is anything but in tune with the season.

      The Best Present Ever – When Frank wants to give his remote daughter the best Christmas he can, he labours for days just to see his daughter’s face light up as she sees the best present ever.

      The Christmas Season

      The broad narrative terms of how we view Christmas changes slightly just before the season arrives. Christmas is generally accepted as a materialistic festival, with Santa in his Coca-Cola suit hanging, with the presents, under the tree with joy. Jesus hovers in the background hoping to be invited to the real party, instead of sitting in the cold crèche beside the highway.

      The way that Christmas gets talked about, in the media and outside the shops, varies, of course, from person to person. But the media itself, more monocular in its vision, would loudly proclaim that the season is about giving, and the stores have several gift options available for perusal. As soon as such a statement about this holiday is made, like throwing boiled eggs at Easter, people will jump with their counterarguments. What about Dickens? they will ask. What about the Grinch?

      Certainly, on the face of it, the various incarnations of both Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Doctor Seuss’ The Grinch Who Stole Christmas seem to allow an anti-materialistic message to creep under the wrapping. The cold and empty lives of Scrooge and the Grinch are famous in their bleak anger, and the lack of material wealth does not seem to affect either Tiny Tim or Cindy Lou Who. In fact, none of the victims of the two misers’ machinations are concerned when they are either mistreated or robbed.

      The Grinch comes down from his lonely mountain where he has everything, and steals all the presents. This does not disturb the essence of Christmas at all. The Whos wake the following morning without even noticing the home invasion, and gather around the gap in the village square which used to house a tree. This poses a logical problem for the Grinch. If the joy of Christmas is wrapped with its presents, then it should have been carried away on his sleigh, but since it was not, then Christmas must mean something else. Pondering the question while hanging over the precipice, the Grinch comes to a conclusion. Unfortunately, his viewing audience is not privy to his insight. We hear about his ill-fitting shoes and oversized heart, but as to what the logical progression of his thoughts might have taught him we could not say. We do, however, wonder why returning the presents is necessary. If the Whos are just as happy without and the presents can only be saved from the sheer gorge by great effort, then perhaps it might be better to let them slip away, and run off to enjoy whatever true meaning of Christmas might be gleaned from the Whos’ delight.

      Scrooge has much the same insight. Forced to peer into his own miserable past as well as encouraged to think about how few people will cry when he is gone, Scrooge is asked to ponder why the Cratchit family delights in their tiny hovel while they dine on scraps. Like the Grinch, Scrooge’s change of heart is hidden from the viewer, but something about a view of his lonely gravesite and the Cratchit family joy gives him an insight that his freezing office and shivering employee never encouraged. He has been invited to the Cratchit family dinner, and when he wakes the next morning after his unsettled sleep, he worries that he will miss that suddenly important appointment. Upon discovering that he still has time, he rushes off to the event.

      Like the Grinch, however, Scrooge pauses long enough to gather an armful of presents and food, and then skips over to the cold family hearth. We watch the scene closely. The Whos get their presents back, and the Christmas bonus of the Cratchit family is delivered to their door. As viewers, we realize that as much, perhaps even more Christmas cheer is to be gotten from the returned gifts or food, as from their unexpected dinner guests. Neither the Grinch’s presence nor the Scrooge’s is now necessary. The true meaning of Christmas, we learn reluctantly, is that togetherness, with gifts, equals Christmas.

      Neither the Grinch nor Scrooge encourage any meaningful change to society, and although the viewer is pleased to see the happiness on the faces of the near victims, he or she is left slightly unsettled. Both of the films are short, and we find ourselves remembering the two men who had the poor judgement to come to the Scrooge to get alms for the needy. Likewise, we ask, what type of society is Whoville that allows, while they share their good cheer, a lonely misanthrope on a nearby mountain? It sounds more like our society than theirs. Of course we only get to see Whoville on vacation, and the busy workings of their culture is hidden behind the edges of the TV screen. The Ron Howard revision, with Jim Carrey as the Grinch, tries to investigate this society, but unfortunately only with the mandate of making the story line more palatable, the manic Grinch more maligned.

      It is easy to see that the middle class men will still be collecting for the poor every Christmas, an action that does not touch their lives the rest of the year, and that neither the Grinch nor Scrooge have appreciably changed the world around them, although their own lives are much brighter.

      Cindy Lou and Tiny Tim are the only ones who seem to be untouched by the materialistic system. Cindy Lou actually seems to be happy to have the Grinch at the table, and even while the other Whos are playing with their returned toys, clamouring and enjoying the feast, the Grinch is bonding with little Cindy Lou. Likewise, Tiny Tim enjoys the new presence in his home. The shows, unfortunately, have forgotten the true meaning of Christmas. They gloss over the pleasure of a child at a new face, or at receiving attention in the middle of the chaos. Lost in the debris of unrecycled paper on the floor, Tiny Tim and Cindy Lou’ delight in the company of the Scrooge and the Grinch is overlooked.

      I propose to revise these Christmas classics. I want the Grinch to drop the presents into the canyon instead of returning them. I picture him trudging down the huge hill with his dejected and abused dog to be welcomed by the open arms of the endlessly happy Whos. I want him to scrounge for food with the Whos so that they might not be hungry on Christmas day. I want him and Cindy Lou Who to bond while they visit the soup kitchens so that their contentment will not be discomforted by the pangs of hunger.

      Likewise, I want the Scrooge to come for Christmas dinner, as he was invited by the generous Bob Cratchit, but I want him to arrive, as is more his wont, empty-handed. I want that family to invite him into their hovel. I want them to share their tiny meal. Instead of their astonishment at Scrooge’s sudden largess, I want them to share the regular Cratchit Christmas meagreness. I want them to accept Scrooge on his own terms, not for the amount of presents he brings.

      If the Grinch stays in town and gets a job so that he can co-parent Cindy Lou Who and be closer to this delightful group of people, so much the better. And if they make use of his energy and enthusiasm for his projects, society will be the stronger. If Scrooge gives Cratchit a raise, let it be in the workplace, and not remind Cratchit of their unequal power relations in front of his family on a holiday. Let Cratchit and Scrooge become coworkers, rather than merely on opposite ends of a one-time-only raise. Let them work side by side for mutual advantage. Let them restructure the company so that the new cooperative might work for society’s benefit.

      In short, I want real giving for Christmas. I want considerate gifts that reflect the amount of thought put into them. And if Christmas is about their family, or someone else’s, then let that budding relationship not be sullied by presents. Let Grinch and Scrooge be accepted on their own terms, not on the terms of what they bring.

      The Christmas Tree Embargo

      Christmas was firmly in the sights of Americans, and they could practically taste the after bite of rum in their eggnog. Only one problem arose to disturb their perfect season. Everyone had watched Scrooge and his humbug, and commiserated when the Grinch stole the Whos’ Christmas, in the form of presents and the feast, but few of those avid fans realized that their own Grinchly neighbour was about to descend upon them. Few

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