A Story for You…
“The Runaway
Christmas Spirit”
By Jeanie Kezo
(1,507 Words)
(A short story
published on Dec. 29, 2005 in the
"People, these days--there's no pleasing
them—hmph!" Solomon shook The Aggravate in disgust. Tugging
the curls of his beard, he sneered while reading a letter
to the editor: 'Christmas already?
Why, the leaves have barely left the trees.
We're still cleaning pumpkin pulp off the roads, and the stores want us
to think about Christmas!' The nerve of some people! Don't they
realize that Christmas needs to be a long holiday? The stores need
time to pile all those stuffed gorillas, high def flat screen TV’s, and
blinking massage chairs into the layaway bins and an equally long time to find
them. I think I'll just--"
"Stop, Sol--you're losing your Christmas
spirit, and you can't afford to do that," Millicent said.
"I'll never lose my Christmas spirit,
woman! Have you forgotten that I'm the Spirit of Retail Christmas?
Why, I'll make Christmas last for as long or as short as I damn well please,
and no one will tell me that I can't."
"But, Dear, you'll
scare away the very customers who come to your stores if you shout any
louder. It's not spiritlike..."
"Be gone with you, woman! You're
spoiling my aura." Solomon waved an ethereal hand at his wife and
threw the newspaper across the room.
From the north, a wind mustered its fury, herding
cloudbanks before it like sheep to the slaughter pens. "Have you forgotten you’re married to
the Spirit of Moderation?” Millicent replied.
Her angular jaw clenched as she brought her face within inches of
Solomon’s reddening features. As she
planted her hands on her hips, ice crystals glinted and fell from her fingertips,
multiplying across the countryside, below.
Solomon confronted his wife for what seemed like
hours, his gaze locked on hers in a contest to see who would break, first. At last, it was he who looked away at the
snow that blew around in tiny whorls, hiding under doorways and drifting into
open spaces. His anger wavered, as
though he were mulling over some truth long forgotten. “Hmm…Is that why we have a daughter named Adventure
and a son named Reckless Abandon?” He
chuckled. “Yes, I hate to admit it, but
that’s one thing I do love about you. We
complement each other in a most arbitrary manner.”
This time,
Millicent smiled, causing sunlight to blanch the clouds. “Old Sol, we did cause our share of blizzards
over the years, haven’t we? But, the
fact still remains that your tantrum has gone too far.”
"I said, silence!" Solomon
bellowed. Smiling, he picked up a calligraphy pen and began scribbling on
parchment paper, his pen scratching bold swirls across the page. "I
now proclaim Christmas to be never-ending, a holiday that will last from
January 1st to December 31st and beyond..." As he wrote, the
wrinkles in his brow relaxed and the lines that creased his mouth widened into
a grin. He sighed and sprawled across
his cloud kingdom. This will teach those moralistic highbrows, he
thought.
"Send this letter off to all the Santas around
the world, posthaste," he called to Millicent. "From now on,
we'll have blow-up Santas, white Christmas trees, and Christmas ads 365 days a
year, and no one will tell me when to stop. Why, I'll run them all
ragged. I’ll teach them to tell me what to do.”
Millicent folded her arms and tapped her foot on
the clouds. A storm of mammoth
proportions developed in
The days and months following the disagreement
between Millicent and Solomon passed without further incident. In fact, the world reveled in Solomon’s
Christmas spirit. The stores enjoyed
their highest profits ever—singing buck heads were back-ordered from
Solomon turned to Millicent, one day, and said,
“Millie, I have outdone myself, this year, don’t you think? Look at the profits that my stores are
reaping—why, Santas will pull in thousands of dollars in commissions, this
year. My retail employees are earning
thousands more from extra hours that they’ve worked, and all the stockings in
the world will be filled.”
Millicent looked up from her baking, the odor of
cinnamon and almond wafting through the air.
She dipped a slender finger into her cookie dough and dabbed it on
Solomon’s nose. Laughing, he picked her
up and twirled her around the room.
“Stop, Sol—you’ll shake the heavens loose again,” she said. “It’s wonderful to see you happy again, and I
hope you’ve enjoyed my Christmas present to you.”
Solomon’s smile disappeared. His brows furrowed into jagged lines of
disapproval and his mouth opened in amazement.
“Your present to me?” he
asked. “Does this mean you’re taking
credit for the success of this year’s Christmas Spirit?”
“I am,” she replied. She folded her arms and tapped one foot on a
cloud pillow, causing gigantic snowflakes to pepper
“As the Spirit of Moderation, you wouldn’t know the
first thing about how to make people happy.”
“Well, if that’s how you really feel, then there’s
no point in my being here.” Millicent
turned and left Solomon’s presence; the clouds disappeared and the temperatures
plummeted, submerging a hundred miles of the world below her in a subzero
freeze.
So it was that the New Year dawned bright and cold,
but the Spirit of Retail Christmas raged on, saturating the world in decadence
and greed. People trampled each other in
their efforts to find the best deals; credit card bills smothered people with
staggering balances. Department store
Santas developed ulcers and heart attacks from all the stress of dealing with
spoiled, screaming children. Elves went
on strike, demanding higher pay and better benefits for the extra hours they
had to work.
Meanwhile, the Salvation Army bell ringers stood as
lonely sentinels in front of stores, huddled over empty kettles and shivering
from the cold. Churches sent pleas to
their once-faithful parishioners to return to worship services. Collection coffers lay empty, while the
homeless continued to suffer. There was
no sharing in the world, no thought for fellow man. Worst of all, Millicent had left Solomon
alone to consider the consequences of his decision.
Angry and grieving, he paced the length and breadth
of his kingdom, pondering what had led to such a crisis. The heavens reflected his stress with a
series of storms that ravaged pockets of the world with their severity. Blizzards, floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes
ripped chunks out of the earth and overwhelmed its population. Solomon called out to Millicent and the wind
echoed his loneliness. After Hurricane
Katrina devastated the Gulf, she returned to him for a day.
“You’ve gone too far this time, Sol,” she
said. “Look at the chaos you’ve caused
and the people you have killed with your brooding. Have you no thought for anyone but yourself?”
Solomon reached out to her, his expression
questioning. “That’s just the
trouble—now that you’re gone, I can’t think of anything or anyone else but
you. I was wrong, Millie…Come back to
me.”
She turned away, seeming to wrestle with some inner
struggle. “I want to come back, but—no,
I won’t—not until you agree to stop Christmas.”
“Stop Christmas?
It’s been so long… I want to but
damn, I don’t know how.”
“Then, I’m afraid we’re at an impasse. Good-bye.”
She turned away but stopped at his touch on her shoulder.
“Have you forgotten who you are?” he asked.
Puzzled, she turned back to him. “I know very well who I am,” she sputtered.
“I think not.
Don’t you think this is a shameful way for the Spirit of Moderation to
treat her husband? Haven’t you punished
me enough?” He clutched her shoulders
and drew her to him.
Months passed and seasons changed, but Christmas
refused to loosen its grip on humanity.
Millicent regretted the brief moment she had let her guard down to her
husband, but time also made her realize that Solomon was right. The people in the world paid for the pain of
their separation by waging war on each other.
Three more years passed, while Solomon and Millicent worked through
their differences. That year, Solomon
finally found a way to make Christmas end at midnight on December 24th when
Millicent bore him a son they named Peace.