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Home for Christmas
Prologue
On the way back from New Mexico after spending Christmas with his long-estranged family, Mitch kept thinking about how his life had changed since that day he met the woman who was now sitting next to him. It was a good thing Bonnie was driving because his thoughts weren't on the road. He kept jumping back and forth between now and then.

---oOo---
Mitch Ryder worked on the Double JJ Ranch. He loved his job because it involved working with horses rather than people. A solitary man, being around people made him uncomfortable. He and Sam were driving home after five days on the road; they were within one hundred and fifty miles of cold beer, hot showers and getting out of the damn truck. Mitch hated these trips, but it was all part of the job. He had successfully delivered the four horses to their new home and with any luck it would be a couple of months before he had to do it again.

He was trying to get a station on the radio on this desolate stretch of highway when he saw a flash of color ahead. He started to slow down, and as he got closer he saw a female waving her arms. Normally, he wouldn't have stopped, but out here in the middle of nowhere it would be criminal not to help out. The thing that bothered him was that there wasn't a vehicle in site. What the hell was she doing out here? Was there someone hiding in the gulch waiting to steal his truck?

He slowed but didn't turn on his blinker. He drove past and stopped about fifteen yards ahead. He got out and debated letting Sam out before he decided to make use of Sam's talents. Sam would let him know if this was a set-up or not. Sam, his trusty companion of ten years, was a mutt of questionable lineage. Mitch had found him on a road much like this one on a trip just like this one. He never knew where he came from but here was this little pup all by his lonesome, running along the highway. It was the best stop Mitch had ever made. Now Sam was his constant companion - from that little ball of fur that came running toward him to the 100-pound giant he was today.

Sam sniffed the air and took off toward the stranded female. Coast clear, was the message Mitch received. He approached the woman who had bent down to pet Sam.

One point in her favor.

"Howdy, ma'am. What the hell are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?"

She looked up at him, still petting Sam and answered. "There is no easy answer to that question, Mister."

"No, I don't suppose there would be. Are you expecting someone to pick you up, are you stranded, do you need a ride?

1. Thanksgiving in a New World: The Plan Forms
Coming home feels weird, Clare Marsh thought as she passed the gravy. Not as weird as going to college did, but weird.

She inwardly scolded herself for being ungrateful. Not every freshman college student could afford to come home for Thanksgiving, so she had no right to feel weird in her childhood home. That said, she did feel a bit weird.

"So, what do you think the King will say in his speech today?" Jessica Marsh, Clare's mother, asked to start a new round of conversations.

Clare didn't join in that conversation, but it gave her a new thing to be thankful for - the fact that she lived today and not 60 years ago before they had a King. But then everyone who wasn't around then was thankful that they hadn't had to live through the collapse.

Since history wasn't her forté, Clare didn't know all the factors that led to the collapse. It was something about energy and pollution or something along those lines. All she really knew (since it had been on almost every history test she'd ever taken) was that 52 years ago there had been a Constitutional Congress that rewrote the constitution from the ground up. Clare had heard about the 'checks and balances' system, but only as one of the causes of the collapse. History (as written by the new government) had judged that without those checks and balances the old government would have been more effective, more efficient, and able to prevent the collapse. Some said that this judgement was suspect since it had been a worldwide collapse, but those debates had never made it into any history class that Clare had taken. She had heard a few people (mostly seniors) debating the pros and cons of a republic versus the current monarchy, but as far as Clare was concerned, having the executive powers (such as they were) in the hands of a figurehead monarch clearly worked best.

"Do you think he'll try to reach out to some of the more, um, different areas?" Aunt Mona Kasey, Clare's mother's sister, asked.

Clare tried not to think about the different areas. The years of the collapse had taken their toll, as had the rebuilding, and not everywhere had been rebuilt along the same lines. Her professor for Economics 101 had said that the country was now more a commonwealth of locales than a true nation, and Clare believed that. In some areas you could walk into any drugstore and, if you could pay for it, leave with the drug of your choice, from old-fashioned heroin to the latest blend of S; while in others possession of alcohol was a capital offence. Most areas were somewhere in between those extremes, but mind-altering substances weren't the only issue that split the nation. Name the issue and most of the country was somewhere in the middle of it, with extreme positions taken in various jurisdictions.

A Christmas Carole
by Austin Carr
Carole was watching a saccharine Christmas movie on TV, but far from putting her in the spirit of the season, it was souring her even more on the holiday. As the family hugged happily at the credits, she disgustedly flipped to another channel. "Yeah, Merry damn Christmas to me," she muttered, flipping through the remote until she found something less annoying. It was a futile search. She'd have no doubt felt differently if her husband was with her on Christmas Eve, but he was working the swing shift now, which meant she rarely saw him outside of when they were sleeping. Truth be told, even when he was physically present he was largely absent in spirit. She doubted they'd be laughing and hugging their way through unwrapping Christmas presents like old times even if Gary were home.

Her marriage was just five years old, but Carole could sense it crumbling faster than their fifty-five year old starter home. At least with the house she could call in plumbers, painters, repairmen of all types, but she was at a loss as to who she could call for a marriage on the fritz. Her friends were of no earthly use, largely trying to entice her back into singledom so they wouldn't feel quite so left behind, or sniffing disdainfully that the young married woman with the good job and handsome, professional husband was concerned about a couple of niggling problems that wouldn't even register on their own relationship debit sheets.

She'd even sounded her mother out on the subject, but absent obvious adultery, physical abuse, or chronic alcoholism her mom was hard pressed to see a significant problem. Her husband was unfailingly kind, if increasingly distant, and never made her uneasy. While sex had tapered off in quantity and was quite a few degrees cooler in quality, Gary was a skilled and considerate lover and usually responded quickly to her advances. She was concerned that his own sexual advances, once an every morning and evening expectation, with ad hoc approaches thrown in whenever she bent over just so, had so quickly dissipated. It wasn't as if she'd gotten fat or let herself go. She still looked great in tight jeans, better in a tight skirt, and could glance over her shoulder in the mirror and look at her butt with approval.

And now his new work schedule was seemingly another nail in the marriage coffin. Gary was an operations manager for a large I.T. processing company and he'd recently moved to the swing shift - a 4PM to midnight grind that meant he left before she got home from work and didn't get home until she was asleep. The move was bad enough, but when she found out he'd actually put in for the position change, she was flummoxed. He told her that the twelve percent shift differential would make a huge impact on their finances and while that was true she didn't know if the extra money offset really only seeing her husband on the weekends.

Tawse under the Christmas Tree
by Tara Black
Kathleen and Andrew had been a couple for a little over six months and to the eyes of many who knew them it was a happy, even ideal relationship. He had landed a job in an go-ahead IT firm while she was a probationary PE teacher at the Watt Academy. The Fife secondary school served a string of coastal villages in one of which they occupied a small terrace house. For two people in their early twenties it was a success story.

And yet ... it wasn't so much a positive dissatisfaction, more a growing sense of predictability. Week in, week out, the social round of dinners among a smallish group of friends with occasional cultural events thrown in, the same arguments to and fro with the same minds running on familiar tracks. It wasn't exactly boring, but definitely not what Kathleen was moved to describe as exciting. Nor was her bed quite the place it used to be, though what they did there was fine and she was sure for many folk would be a step up from what they had settled for.

And then, just a few weeks before, she had become aware that a long-term unease with one particular subject area was turning into something more. It wasn't something that came up often because there wasn't a lot of it about - vanishingly little, in fact. From something once widespread through society, at home and school, in reformatories and prisons, corporal punishment had more or less disappeared.

So Kathleen was rarely embarrassed by any discussion of the topic amongst the liberal circles she moved in: opposition to its use was a foregone conclusion. No, the discomfort came from within herself, a tendency to discover herself at idle moments with a scene of traditional discipline beginning to play itself out in her mind. She was a fly on the wall as the errant prefect quaked while her headmistress selected a cane from a fearsome rack of such instruments.

The drama never made it beyond its initial stages for she caught herself in the act and shook such fancies out of her head. All well and good until they took a twist: now in her mind's eye she was the culprit awaiting the consequences of her misdeeds. And retribution was to come through a different instrument: the tawse, long-banished in actuality from Scottish schools.

Things reached a head one night when at four in the morning Kathleen came out of a dream. Or perhaps she still half-dreamed, for the images of the leather instrument were so vivid. They weren't of the thing being raised to strike her hand; that notion merely repelled her. No, she was in thrall to the picture of it coming down with a juicy slap across her bottom. What would that feel like? The thought brought her out in shivers and she pulled up the covers to snuggle closer into the warmth of the sleeping figure at her side.

Christmas at Woodbridge Manor
by Abigail Armani
The snow-blanketed landscape beyond the window gleamed white ice, humps and hollows of the once comfortingly familiar now teased into otherworldly shapes. Huge drifts blown by the fierce west wind loomed like bizarre creatures of nightmare in this frozen land. And still the snow continued to fall from a leaden afternoon sky. Trees contorted beneath the weight, trunks twisted, icicle-hung branches breaking and cracking. Paths and roads were obliterated by several feet of snow, and the extreme cold bit bone deep.

The old man shifted in his chair by the glowing fire, his gnarled fingers grasping the comforting rug that covered his legs and feet. Age sat heavily on his frame and his old bones ached from the winter chill. The scene outside sparked a memory from his youth, and a smile curled the corners of his mouth as through half closed eyes he remembered...

---oOo---
They said it was the worst winter in 100 years. In all his twenty years Samuel had known nothing like it - the ice was several inches thick on the inside of the windows and the snow waist-high outside and still falling steadily. Everything was frozen, wrapped in a heavy white blanket. The biting cold was so intense no one could keep warm despite being muffled in several layers of clothing. The prospect of a bitter and miserable Yuletide loomed as the temperature plummeted even further. Despondency and discomfort were beginning to give way to panic and the villagers of Woodbridge prayed for the snow to stop and warmer weather to set in.

Help came as Lord Woodham from Woodbridge Manor sent his groundsmen and gamekeepers out to round up everyone in the village and bring them to the manor where they would remain until the weather improved. The promise of roaring fires and plentiful supplies of hot food lured the villagers from their own freezing abodes into the comforting warmth of 'the big house'. And so they came, trudging through the snow and ice and cutting winds, their belongings piled high on sledges or tied into bundles. Young and old alike ventured out into the Arctic conditions, and if they couldn't walk unaided they were carried on makeshift stretchers or on the backs of broad-shouldered men.

The manor dated back to Elizabethan times. It was an impressively elegant building with mullioned windows that blazed with the light of a hundred welcoming candles. Lord Woodham, a widower, resided there with his daughter Elizabeth and a dozen or more servants, the latter now scurrying around with great purpose, piling more logs on the fire in the great hall, heating enormous pans of soup, organising blankets and rugs, retrieving all the spare china and cutlery from storage. The tantalising mouth-watering smell of freshly baked bread and roasting meats emanated from the kitchens. It seemed that Woodbridge Manor had enough provisions and fuel to last for months. No one would go hungry or cold this Christmas.

The Christmas Spirit
by Steve Timmons
Each year, as Christmas approaches, Heidi and I dig out Grandma Erika's old diaries and read once again the delightful story that lies at the root of our family heritage. It's a tale which we didn't really come to know until after she and my grandfather had both passed on. This Christmas, we decided to share it with you. A number of years ago...

---oOo---
My mood matched the bleak weather of that long past dismal November day. Thanksgiving was just around the corner and the Christmas season would follow quickly on its heels, typically a very festive time of year in my family and amongst our many friends of German ancestry here in York County, Pennsylvania.

This year, I thought with a sigh, it'll take a lot more than Christmas decorations and parties to lift my spirits. And rightly so, I reminded myself. It was just too soon. It'd only been a couple of months since their passing, my paternal grandparents, that is, Konrad and Erika Hoffman.

Both in their late nineties, they'd passed away within weeks of each other, Grandpa Konrad first, after nearly seventy years together, seventy happy, prosperous years, I should add.

And well deserved happiness, too! For they'd raised not only their own blended family but, after the death of my parents in an auto accident when I was only ten, they'd taken on the task of raising my older sisters and me, seeing us all through college, and in my case law school, and into happy marriages of our own.

I'd been both flattered and honored when, on my first day in private law practice, they'd entrusted me with the preparation of their wills and named me executor of their estates. Not that their estates were in any way complicated for these were simple hard working folks. Grandpa was a professor of German Studies at nearby York College and Grandma owned a small import company specializing in products from Germany.

They lived and exemplified the American dream.

Now, after weeks of gentle persuasion by my darling wife, we were finally beginning the sad task of sorting through their possessions, the mementos of a long and loving marriage, which seemed to fill their charming old home from cellar to attic.

Ultimately, I supposed, the old house, the house in which I'd grown up from the age of ten, would have to be sold. My sisters and their husbands were well settled in their own homes and my grandparent's house seemed just too big for so far childless newlyweds like Heidi and me. It was the practical thing to do, my lawyerly mind informed me, with the proceeds of the sale to be divided amongst the heirs. Practical but...

---oOo---
Truthfully, we didn't get a lot done that first day. It was more like surveying the house to see what we were up against. I'd gravitated toward the cellar where I knew I'd find many of my grandfather's things while Heidi headed for the attic to prowl around amongst Grandma Erika's treasures.

One Last Christmas
by Eric Essex
There was only a dusting of snow on the ground, but David Hammond took his time as he made his way through the private little cemetery. He would probably be able to get back up on his own if he slipped and fell, but with not a single living soul within earshot it seemed prudent to be careful all the same. The sun was going down and there was a sharp wind blowing in from the north. Now that he was in his eighties, every winter seemed colder than the last. And longer too. The heavy overcoat and authentic leather gloves he wore protected most of him from the wind's bite, but his face was numb before he even reached her grave.

Grateful that he was still spry enough to do it, the old man knelt down and tenderly placed a wreath of lilies against the marble marker that read:

HELEN McCOY Aug. 29, 1935 - Dec. 24, 1988 "I never met a man I couldn't learn to like."
That was it. That was all she wanted. No mention of the dozens of films she appeared in, nor even the three Oscar nominations she had earned. Just that one line from Harriet's Secret, the one everyone always remembered her for. And of course her stage name. On her death certificate she might have been Helen McAllister Hammond, but to her fans and the world at large, she would always be Helen McCoy.

"It's that time of year again," her husband sighed as he adjusted the wreath so that it was sitting just right. What he wouldn't say was Merry Christmas.

Never that.

Not once in all the years they had been apart.

The walk home was not a long one. That was the compromise they agreed on as she lay on her death bed that long ago December. She would keep her stage name and she would have her famous line, but she would be buried in the little graveyard that was less than half a mile from their home - and half a continent away from her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Good thing, too. At his age, Hammond was in no condition to be making a longer journey than that to pay his respects. His last visit had left him short of breath and with a pain in his side that hadn't wanted to go away. No such problems now though. In fact, he felt as good as he had in months.

The brisk air, he told himself. That was what had him feeling like a new man. Had to be.

All thoughts of this sudden improvement vanished when he was coming up the drive to his house though. "It can't be," he muttered as he squinted his eyes and kept on walking. There were lights in the front windows, tiny lights that blinked red and green. Christmas lights!

Scowling the kind of scowl that only old men - and particularly cantankerous old men at that - can scowl, David Hammond trudged home.

Blue Christmas
by Austin Carr
A young man, lost and adrift over his girlfriend leaving during the holidays, finds peculiar solace at a local bar...

It took me over two and a half decades of life, but I was finally getting a handle on the whole 'Bah, humbug' deal.

Victorian literature turned to film wasn't really my deal. It seemed like a lot of impossibly stiff people dressing in improbably engineered clothing trying to get their mouths around ridiculously awkward sentences, and my exposure was pretty much limited to the two dozen or so renditions of Dickens' A Christmas Carol that inundated TV screens every December. For my money, which admittedly was limited, Mr. Magoo's turn as Scrooge lapped the field, although I always wondered what Snoopy could have done with the role had a Peanuts version been completed.

But this year I was feeling a little more kinship with old Ebeneezer. Granted, the old guy had a lot more reasons for bitterness than I did. I didn't have a dead partner spending half the company money on enough chain accessories to make even the most Goth chick envious and then dragging the ensemble along my nice hardwood floors. Nor did my parents get so lashed to the hookah pipe that they named me Ebeneezer, although Morgan wasn't exactly a social resume enhancer. But I did get the same holiday brush-off from the girlfriend. Okay, maybe not quite the same. Old Scrooge got the stiff arm because he loved cash too much; I apparently got the brush because I didn't have enough of it, and limited prospects of turning that reality around. Either way you looked at it, the girl was gone, and I could feel myself well on my way to curmudgeon status.

So now I thought I understood the translation. "Bah" meant you were screwed and "Humbug" obviously had something to do with double penetration. I looked sourly at the strings of Christmas lights adorning the house. Quite a few hours of labor invested in that money-sucking undertaking, and all of it because Shelly was a Christmas creature of the first rank. The shinier the baubles, the better she liked it. I didn't mind the effort, since it seemed to make it more likely that my own baubles would get properly shined. Now my baubles were on their own, and all I could see was a number of burnt out bulbs and sagging lines that I had no interest in fixing.

I couldn't stand being around the house, looking at a bed with only one side rumpled, a sink with one bowl in it, and a Christmas tree with a handful of presents that Shelly would never open. I'd already picked up one and put it in my shirt pocket; a gold tennis bracelet with a trio of small diamonds as accents. It wasn't a Faberge piece by any stretch, but the young saleslady had seemed wistful at the purchase, which was a good enough barometer for me.

The Best Christmas Present Ever
by Alan Barr
"What are you getting me for Christmas this year?" she asked him casually over breakfast one morning.

"I haven't thought of anything yet," he replied, slightly guiltily. "Is there anything you want?"

"There probably is - but I prefer it when you choose something. You know what they say - it's the thought that counts."

"But what if I choose wrong?"

"It doesn't matter. The pleasure for me is in knowing you've made the effort to go into the shop and look around and make the decision. I like to think of you being all awkward and out of your depth in the perfume department..."

"Or horribly embarrassed at the underwear counter?"

"Yes, even better! It shouldn't be too easy. It should require a bit of effort on your part - even a bit of pain."

"That's sadistic!"

"I don't care! And don't you want to know what I'm getting you?"

"You wouldn't tell me anyway!"

"No, of course I wouldn't. But I will tell you this - I've given it more thought than ever this year, and I've come up with something quite unusual, quite unlike anything I've ever given you before. It isn't cheap, but I'm sure you'll like it - once you've got over the surprise, that is. Yes, I think you'll like it very much indeed. You may even decide it's the best present ever."

"The best present ever? Now that is a confident claim!"

"Isn't it!"

"Don't I get a clue of some sort?"

"No, I don't think so. I want it to be a complete surprise."

He pretended to be deep in thought for a few seconds then raised a finger as if inspiration had suddenly struck. "Is it socks?"

"Damn! How did you guess?"

---oOo---
He didn't waste too much time pondering his mystery present. Like most men, Christmas didn't figure too prominently in his thoughts. It was something to be endured as much as enjoyed! To be honest, he didn't much care what she got him - he had everything he needed anyway. Whatever it turned out to be, he'd make the necessary appreciative noises. And he would be grateful too. Not so much for whatever weird and wonderful object it turned out to be, but because after nineteen years of marriage, she still cared enough to put that amount of effort into it. Now, what the hell was he going to get her?

---oOo---
Do you have anything planned for Christmas Eve?" she asked him casually over breakfast one morning.

"No, nothing."

"Only I thought I might pop out for a drink with Doreen after dinner."

"Fine." Why had she even bothered to mention it, he wondered.

"So, could you make sure you're in all evening?"

He raised a quizzical eye over the corner of his newspaper. "Does it matter?"

"Yes it does. That's when your present is being delivered."

"Oh, I see. Well, yes, I'll be here. But can you trust me not to open it? That's the question!"