Tag: Christmas

Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus by Frederik Pohl

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus by Frederik Pohl (Alternating Currents, 1956) is, partially, an “if this goes one” satire about the commercialisation of Christmas, and begins with the story’s narrator, Mr Martin, recruiting a young woman called Lilymary Hargreave for his department at Heinemann’s store. Her job is to gift-wrap and label shoppers’ Christmas purchases, and it’s here where we get the first dose of satire (apart an earlier mention that this Christmas rush is happening in early September):

[Lilymary] called me over near closing time. She looked distressed and with some reason. There was a dolly filled with gift-wrapped packages, and a man from Shipping looking annoyed. She said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Martin, but I seem to have done something wrong.”
The Shipping man snorted. “Look for yourself, Mr. Martin,” he said, handing me one of the packages.
I looked. It was wrong, all right. Heinemann’s new wrinkle that year was a special attached gift card—a simple Yule scene and the printed message:

The very Merriest of Season’s Greetings
From …………………………………
To ……………………………………
$8.50

The price varied with the item, of course. Heinemann’s idea was for the customer to fill it out and mail it, ahead of time, to the person it was intended for. That way, the person who got it would know just about how much he ought to spend on a present for the first person. It was smart, I admit, and maybe the smartest thing about it was rounding the price off to the nearest fifty cents instead of giving it exactly. Heinemann said it was bad-mannered to be too precise—and the way the customers were going for the idea, it had to be right.

When Lilymary says she can’t complete the job as she needs to go home to her father, Martin does it himself. Then, when she doesn’t come in the day after, Martin goes to her house. There he finds that the father, Lilymary, and the other three daughters are Sabbath observant.
The rest of the story sees Martin romantically pursue Lilymary, which provides a clash-of-cultures situation between him and the family, who have just returned to the United States after a long time in Borneo as religious missionaries. Consequently, they don’t have a TV or dishwasher or any mod-cons, or any interest in them. They also provide their own entertainment and, during an after dinner session, when Martin sings a particularly commercialised version of ’Tis the Season of Christmas (“Come Westinghouse, Philco! Come Hotpoint, G.E.! Come Sunbeam! Come Mixmaster! Come to the Tree!”), the atmosphere sours. Then, when he later arranges for the visit of a Santa Claus and the Elves sales team to the house, the relationship breaks down completely. Eventually (spoiler), at the suggestion of his boss, Martin proposes to Lilymary (“Why not marry her for a while?”), she rejects him, and then he finds out the family is leaving once again for Borneo, so he tries again. He eventually succeeds when he tracks them down to a church service, prays with Lilymary, and then gets religion.
This is okay I guess, but it would have been a more interesting piece if it had concentrated on the Christmas satire and not the boy-wants-girl story.
** (Average). 8, 250 words.

Miracle by Connie Willis

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Miracle by Connie Willis (Asimov’s Science Fiction, December 1991) gets off to a leisurely start with some office chit-chat about Christmas between the protagonist, Lauren, and one of her office colleagues, Evie, and this lays out most of the elements that will feature in this tale: two of their co-workers, Scott Buckley (“too cute to ever notice someone like me”), and Fred Hatch (“the fat guy in documentation”), and the movies Miracle on 34th Street and It’s Wonderful Life.
The final character in this Unknown-like fantasy appears when Lauren gets home, and she is door-stepped by an irritating young man saying he is there to give her a Christmas Present. Despite her shutting the door on him twice, he appears in the apartment:

The young man was sitting on the couch, messing with her TV remote. “So, what do you want for Christmas? A yacht? A pony?” He punched buttons on the remote, frowning. “A new TV?”
“How did you get in here?” Lauren said squeakily. She looked at the door. The deadbolt and chain were both still on.
“I’m a spirit,” he said, putting the remote down. The TV suddenly blared on. “The Spirit of Christmas Present.”
“Oh,” Lauren said, edging toward the phone. “Like in A Christmas Carol.”
“No,” he said, flipping through the channels. She looked at the remote. It was still on the coffee table. “Not Christmas Present. Christmas Present. You know, Barbie dolls, ugly ties, cheese logs, the stuff people give you for Christmas.”
“Oh, Christmas Present. I see,” Lauren said, carefully picking up the phone.
“People always get me confused with him, which is really insulting. I mean, the guy obviously has a really high cholesterol level. Anyway, I’m the Spirit of Christmas Present, and your sister sent me to—”
Lauren had dialed nine one. She stopped, her finger poised over the second one. “My sister?”
“Yeah,” he said, staring at the TV. Jimmy Stewart was sitting in the guard’s room, wrapped in a blanket. “Oh, wow! It’s a Wonderful Life.”
My sister sent you, Lauren thought. It explained everything. He was not a Moonie or a serial killer. He was this year’s version of the crystal pyramid mate selector. “How do you know my sister?”
“She channeled me,” he said, leaning back against the sofa. “The Maharishi Ram Das was instructing her in trance-meditation, and she accidentally channeled my spirit out of the astral plane.” He pointed at the screen. “I love this part where the angel is trying to convince Jimmy Stewart he’s dead.” pp. 143-144

After this he tells her that he is there is give what she really wants for Christmas, “her heart’s desire”, before going on to criticise her computer addressed cards, store wrapped presents, etc. Then he disappears, along with her cards, and leaves a Christmas tree growing out of her kitchen floor.
The rest of the story sees Lauren recruit Frank to help her deal with her spirit problem, and the two of them work together to try and get rid of him, as well as cope with various other changes Chris the spirit makes, such as Lauren’s off-the-shoulder black party dress—bought to impress Scott—being changed into a Yanomano Indian costume (Frank helpfully suggests she could wear last year’s pretty red number).
At this point (spoiler) I could see that Lauren was going to end up with Frank and not Scott, and so it materialises (dates with Scott are thwarted by Chris, Frank and Lauren have to come up with last minute gifts for everyone at the office when only Office Depot is open, Fred arrives at the party with the cheese puffs Lauren was meant to bring, Evie arrives wearing the black dress, etc., etc.). Finally, Chris arrives at the party dressed as Santa Claus.
This is an entertaining fantasy rom-com that gets off to a very good start, but I thought it tailed off towards the end (I’m not sure if this is because of pacing/padding problems, or because I guessed where it was going). I also thought that the two movies are referenced too much—but this is maybe a function of describing enough about them to those who aren’t familiar with them. Overall, though, not bad.
***+ (Good to Very Good, or, more accurately, Very Good to Good). 14,000 words.

Track of a Legend by Cynthia Felice

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Track of a Legend by Cynthia Felice (Omni, December 1983) takes place at unspecified point in the future (but after a “Christmas Treaty of ’55”) and is narrated by a schoolgirl. After some preliminary scene setting at school, she goes on a sledging trip with a friend called Timothy to the top of a nearby hill where the latter’s aunt lives in a metal cylinder (the aunt came back from space after the treaty of ’55, and doesn’t go out because of agoraphobia). Their outing ends when they throw snowballs at the video sensors on the house, and the aunt sets her robotic grass cutter on them—they only just get over the big fence in time. As they return home they note the large footprints of a legendary creature they refer to as Bigfoot, and arrange to go hunting for it after Christmas Day.
The second act opens on Christmas morning, when the narrator finds that her parents have got her a new sledge—so she sets off for the hill. Once she arrives she notes the recent large snowfall and decides to build a ramp at the fence to use as ski ramp at the end of her downhill run. Subsequently (spoiler), she misses the ramp and ends up stuck upside down on the fence. Then, when she hears something moving behind her later on, she fears it is Bigfoot, but the thing unhooking her from the fence turns out to be someone in a mechanical space-suit: we realise that the Timothy’s aunt is “Bigfoot”.
This is a relatively plotless narrative with little in the way of complication, but it has an interesting setting and it’s well told. A minor, but pleasant, story.
*** (Good). 5,050 words. Story link.

Christmas Trombone by Raymond E. Banks

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Christmas Trombone by Raymond E. Banks (F&SF, January 1954) is set in a future world where Venusian creatures called “singing cones” can curate and produce “wafer thin discs of Venusian heavy water” which store perfect musical recordings. The story’s main character, Shorty, is an ex-musician who was put out of work by the cones, and the tale begins with him grabbing his trombone from the cupboard and going down to the church on Christmas Eve. On his way there, the chief of police, who has previously warned Shorty about playing in public (“disturbing the peace” in this new musical world), confiscates the instrument.
Shorty continues on to the church to exchange gifts with the clergyman, Dr Blaine, who asks if he will be coming to the service. Shorty tells him no, as Blaine has a singing cone to provide music:

Dr. Blaine took him by the arm and led him into the nave.
Across from them rested the only true singing cone in Blessington. It was almost eight feet high, a tapering mound of pure whiteness, just as it had been on Venus. It “lived” on sound, not talking voices, not explosions or discords. It “lived” on music adding every sweet sound it heard to its repertoire until all its water was solidified and it could no longer hear and remember.
[. . .]
“Here,” said Dr. Blaine, “I’ve got all the great artists who ever recorded Christmas music, Shorty. The best voices, the best arrangements.”
“I know.”
“People need the solemn pageantry of the greatest church music to find the Christmas spirit in these commercial times.”
“Yeah.”
“This cone was a foot-high mound on Venus the night Christ was born in Bethlehem, Shorty. It’s been on earth now for twenty years, adding only the purest and best church music to its being.”
“It’s only been in Blessington five years,” said Shorty, “while I been here 45, man, boy and molecule.”
Dr. Blaine sighed. “Nobody wants the old choir and organ anymore, Shorty. When the cone plays we go back along the centuries to Bethlehem, we watch the miracles beside the Red Sea, we are in the room where the Last Supper was served and we walk with Christ up that final hill—”
“A couple of times I got ’em pretty excited with that old organ you got stashed in the basement.”
“Then play for the cone, Shorty,” said Dr. Blaine. “Play for the cone and make it hear and remember your notes alone with the world’s best musicians.”  pp. 120-121

Shorty doesn’t engage, and tells Blaine his air car needs a new rotor blade (Shorty now works as a mechanic).
The next part of the story sees Shorty arguing with his wife Edith, who tells him he needs to move on, and stop being so bitter about the fact that he has been replaced by the cones. Shorty angrily leaves the apartment and goes to the police station where, after some chit-chat with the desk cop, he slugs him and retrieves his trombone.
The last scene (spoiler) sees Shorty go up a hill near the town and play his trombone, a few notes of Joy to the World. Then he hears the cone at the church play a few of his notes back to him. Shorty starts playing Silent Night:

The cone was silent, listening. He could feel its presence in the background. A moment before it had been scouring out the valley with its sound. Now it was comparing his notes with all the wonderful music stored in its memory.
Softly, you son-of-a-bitch, he told himself. This is final. Shorty, by God, now we’ve got to do the thing!
For 45 seconds he reached the great plane of art that he’d been trying to reach all his life. For 45 seconds he made music that no human or nonhuman agency had ever made before or would ever make again. It was one of those moments. It was clear and clean, human but not gooey. It was one tiny notch more than satisfactory.  pp. 124-125

After Shorty has finished and listens to the cone playing his music back to him, he realises that, after comparing his performance to everything it has stored, the cone has changed nothing (“In Bethlehem, on Venus and beyond to outer space it was a thing of perfect uniqueness.”)
Shorty, finally at peace with himself, throws his horn away.
The story’s cone gimmick is a little artificial (and confusing to begin with) but the last scene is very good, and the story’s arc of a troubled soul finding solace works well in this Christmas tale. One for the ‘Best of the Year’ lists, perhaps.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 3,900 words. Story link.

War Beneath the Tree by Gene Wolfe

Posted on by Paul Fraser

War Beneath the Tree by Gene Wolfe (Omni, December 1979) opens with a young boy called Robin being sent to bed:

“It’s Christmas Eve, Commander Robin,” the Spaceman said. “You’d better go to bed or Santa won’t come.”
Robin’s mother said, “That’s right, Robin. Time to say good night.”
The little boy in blue pajamas nodded, but he made no move to rise.
“Kiss me,” said Bear. Bear walked his funny waddly walk around the tree and threw his arms about Robin. “We have to go to bed. I’ll come, too.” It was what he said every night.
Robin’s mother shook her head in amused despair. “Listen to them,” she said. “Look at him, Bertha. He’s like a little prince surrounded by his court. How is he going to feel when he’s grown and can’t have transistorized sycophants to spoil him all the time?”
Bertha the robot maid nodded her own almost human head as she put the poker back in its stand. “That’s right, Ms. Jackson. That’s right for sure.”

After Robin falls asleep, Bear leaves him and returns to the other robot toys, whereupon they prepare for a battle with an unspecified enemy. Later, Robin wakes and goes downstairs (spoiler) to see his mother, who is dressed up as Santa, put a new set of robot toys under the Christmas tree. Then, after she leaves, he watches as hostilities break out between the old toys and the new. . . .
I was impressed at how much Wolfe manages to pack into this short Pixar-like tale (albeit a Pixar tale with a very dark ending)—apart from the story and its evocative robotic milieu, we have Bertha the servant’s drift into a character like that of a black servant in a 1940s movie (Robin’s mother says the new robot chauffeur will be Italian and stay Italian), and there is a final revelation to Robin about a new baby that will be arriving (with the implied threat of his own obsolescence).
***+ (Good to Very Good). 2,150 words. Story link.