Alternative Christmases

When is Christmas not Christmas? When its equivalent appears under another name in a holiday episode of a TV series or movie franchise. TV Tropes has a page on this phenomenon:

You Mean Xmas

It's not unusual for TV series to have "Christmas" episodes even if they're set in a time or place where Christmas doesn't exist. An episode of XENA, WARRIOR PRINCESS featured "A Solstice Carol." MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC has "A Hearth's Warming Tale," set on the holiday celebrating the occasion when the three types of ponies worked together to save the fledgling realm of Equestria from the terrible Windigos. (This story combines elements of A CHRISTMAS CAROL and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE.) Then there's the infamous STAR WARS holiday special, set on the Wookie home planet at the season of Life Day. (I've never seen this film, so all I know is what's summarized on TV Tropes; it has never been re-aired, because it's so abysmal that Lucas himself loathes it.) The inhabitants of Fraggle Rock celebrate the Festival of the Bell in "The Bells of Fraggle Rock," at the time of year when the Rock slows down and would freeze forever if the Fraggles didn't ring their bells to awaken the Great Bell. The characters in DINOSAURS have Refrigerator Day, appropriately commemorated by lavish feasting. Although BEAUTY AND THE BEAST takes place in the world as we know it, members of the secret underground community where Vincent (the Beast) dwells celebrate "Winterfest" instead of Christmas. Print fiction features a similar phenomenon. There's a Midwinter Festival in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar universe. The people of Discworld have Hogswatchnight, as portrayed in detail in Terry Pratchett's HOGFATHER. The world of Steven Universe is an exception to this pattern. Its canon establishes that the invasion of the alien Gems thousands of years ago altered Earth so radically that Christianity doesn't exist, so there's no Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, etc. However, virtually every temperate-zone culture in the world has a winter solstice celebration with such elements as feasting, lights, greenery, and bells, so it seems likely that the people in this series would have one, too. If they do, apparently the producers and writers simply haven't considered it necessary to mention.

In the animated special ARTHUR'S PERFECT CHRISTMAS, Arthur's bunny friend gets so stressed out by his divorced mother's frantic attempt to make Christmas perfect that he wants to invent their own family holiday instead, "Baxter Day." An episode of SEINFELD popularized the anti-Christmas holiday of Festivus, which includes the Airing of Grievances (when everybody complains to everybody else about offenses committed through the year) and an aluminum pole instead of a tree. In short, the human spirit seems to crave festivity at the dark of the year.

A satirical essay by C. S. Lewis imagines what the ancient Greek historian Herodotus would have made of the modern British Christmas. Herodotus concludes that Exmas and Crissmas can't possibly be the same holiday, because even barbarians wouldn't go through all that expense and bother for a god they don't believe in:

Xmas and Christmas

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Spoiler Tolerance

Last week I reread Agatha Christie's MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (again) after watching the newest movie based on the novel. Some people might wonder why anybody would read a murder mystery more than once. After all, you already know whodunnit! I enjoy rereading books, even detective novels, for the pleasure of watching the characters work things out when I know where the plot is going. While I wouldn't want to know the criminal's identity the first time I read a mystery, otherwise I don't mind being "spoiled" with details of a story before reading it.

One member of our family is so spoiler-averse he tries to avoid even blurbs if possible. (And, in his defense, sometimes an ineptly written blurb can give away secrets it shouldn't.) I, on the other hand, confess I sometimes peek at the end of a book to reassure myself that a favorite character will survive—or, if that character is doomed, to brace myself for the blow. Before the series finale of the vampire police procedural FOREVER KNIGHT aired, I read advance summaries of the plot, and I was glad I had. I was prepared for the downer ending and actually found it marginally less dire than I'd expected from the description.

There's a pop culture phenomenon TV Tropes labels "It was his sled" (alluding to CITIZEN KANE). That phrase refers to a detail that was originally meant as the revelation of a major secret, but now everybody knows it even without viewing or reading the work itself. What mystery fan, even if he or she hasn't read Agatha Christie's novels, doesn't know the astonishing twists in the identities of the killers in MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS or THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD? Upon the first publication of DRACULA, readers who didn't pay attention to reviews would have been surprised when the title character was exposed as a vampire. Relatively few horror fans are aware that in Stevenson's original STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, Hyde's identity was a mystery solved near the end of the story. Now everybody knows what a "Jekyll and Hyde" character means. Ambrose Bierce's "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" depends on a twist ending, but rereading it can still bring pleasure, since the second time around we can appreciate the irony.

Does it "spoil" ROMEO AND JULIET to know in advance that it's a tragedy? Would anyone skip HAMLET or KING LEAR because of the certainty that almost all the major characters will die? Granted, in some circumstances I don't want advance knowledge of a plot. In the latest-aired episode of STEVEN UNIVERSE, for example, I wouldn't want to have been told the shocking revelation beforehand; I would have missed the thrilling rush of, "Wow, this changes everything!" Now that I know, though, I can enjoy re-viewing earlier episodes and noticing the secret clues that were there all along.

On the subject of rereading, C. S. Lewis says that the first time we read a book, we tend to rush through it to satisfy the "narrative lust" of wanting to know how the story turns out. In later readings, we can pause to savor the intricacies of plot, the nuances of characters and relationships, and the writer's style. Rereading books I loved the first time around is one of my favorite activities. How do you feel about rereading, re-watching, and spoilers?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Alien Holidays

Cultures in the non-tropical regions of our planet typically celebrate seasonal holidays such as lights, fire, evergreens, and feasting at the winter solstice; harvest festivals and tributes to the dead in the fall; rituals welcoming spring, e.g., Easter and May Day (as well as advance preparations for the return of spring, such as Carnival and Lent); etc. Heather Rose Jones's Alpennia series takes place in an imaginary country in a version of our Europe. In addition to familiar holidays, the capital city marks the changing of seasons by measuring when the river rises to a certain level. What kinds of holidays might be celebrated on worlds that don't have seasons like ours at all? Come to think of it, why do the Fraggles in the animated series FRAGGLE ROCK have a midwinter festival of bells? They live in a giant cavern complex, where the climate should stay uniform all year round, and they don't have a view of sun, moon, or stars to mark the cycle of the year. (Yeah, I know, because the writers wanted a sort-of Christmas episode, and I loved it, but in-universe the episode lacks logic.)

On a planet where the main division of the year's climate falls between wet and dry, the onset of the rainy season—the time of fertility—might be an occasion for a major holiday. On Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover, which has four moons, some festivals coincide with the appearance of all four moons in the sky. Earth cultures mark months and weeks by phases of the moon, and some cultures follow a lunar rather than a solar year. How would the calendar of a world with no moon look? Without weeks in our sense, what method would societies use to set aside days of rest? Or consider a world like the planet in Isaac Asimov's classic story "Nightfall," with several suns. On that world, total darkness occurs only at intervals of over a millennium. With no memory of night and stars except in mythology, people go mad from the unprecedented sight, and civilization collapses at every "nightfall." But suppose darkness happened rarely but not all that rarely, say roughly once a year. The peoples of that world might have holidays to get them through that frightening occurrence, just as ancient cultures on Earth held rituals and celebrations to ensure that the sun would return on the winter solstice. Other kinds of worlds might have holidays centered on the periodic eruption of a geyser, the migration of important species of animals, or the blooming of a special tree. In our own culture we have celebrations such as the Cherry Blossom Festival and (in my home city in Virginia) the spring Azalea Festival. Capistrano honors the return of the swallows.

The STEVEN UNIVERSE animated series (Cartoon Network) takes place in an alternate world similar to ours but with divergences in history and geography caused by the Gem War (an alien invasion) thousands of years in the past. The characters live in Beach City in the state of Delmarva, for instance. According to the show's creator, this world has no Christmas. We've seen that there's no Halloween. (From these clues, we must assume no Christianity and therefore no Easter either.) Apparently they also don't have Thanksgiving. Other than local town celebrations, we don't yet know what holidays they do celebrate. Because they live in a temperate zone with changing seasons, though, we have to expect them to observe some holidays analogous to the ones we know.

Terry Pratchett's HOGFATHER takes place at the season of Hogswatch, Discworld's analog of Christmas. At the winter solstice the Hogfather brings toys to good children in a sleigh pulled by giant boars. People leave sausages instead of cookies for him, in keeping with the origin of Yuletide as a all-out orgy of feasting before the privations of winter. At the climax of the novel, Susan, Death's part-human granddaughter (it's complicated), has to save the original Hogfather, the primal being on whom the myth is based, from permanent annihilation. Death tells Susan that if she had failed, the sun would not have risen. When she asks what would have happened instead, he says, "A mere ball of flaming gas would have illuminated the world." It's also Death who tells us, in the same scene, "Humans need fantasy to be human."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

ChessieCon

We spent the Friday through Sunday noon after Thanksgiving at ChessieCon in Timonium (just north of Baltimore). I'm thankful for its location, so that we can drive there and back easily; if it required a flight or a long drive, we probably wouldn't go on a holiday weekend. The author guest of honor was Sarah Pinsker, and the musical guest was S. J. Tucker. In addition to her concert, I attended performances by Cade Tinney (who sang a song from the STEVEN UNIVERSE animated series with heart-wrenching beauty) and filk veteran Roberta Rogow. Highly impressed with Roberta Rogow's historical and SF filk, I bought two of her albums in the dealers' room. I especially like her "Schindler's List." And this piece, which she always closes with:

Fact and Fiction

I appeared on two panels, about "The Care and Feeding of Critique Groups" and STEVEN UNIVERSE. My contribution to the discussion of critique groups came from belonging to an online group of around fifteen people, who interact by e-mail. Weekly critique slots are available, and members who want feedback can send their work to the group after reserving a slot. In practice, only a few either submit or critique regularly; many of the fifteen or sixteen members seldom participate, and there's no requirement or penalty. The typical experience described by other panelists was more often with face-to-face groups of fewer people. We talked about the logistics of organizing a critique group, how to give useful feedback, and the importance of the authors in a group being at about the same level of development.

If you haven't watched the STEVEN UNIVERSE series, you'd be amazed at the depth of emotion embodied in what looks, at first glance, like a humorous superhero cartoon for kids. Steven is fourteen-year-old boy (who looks younger, and there's a plot reason why) living with the Crystal Gems, three feminine-identified aliens who fought with Steven's no-longer-present mother in a long-ago rebellion against the Homeworld Gems, who intended to use Earth as an incubator (thereby destroying all life on the planet). Steven is half Gem and half human. His human father remains involved in his life, but it's the Gems who have to protect Steven and teach him to use his nascent powers. They live in Beach City in the state of Delmarva; their home is an alternate version of Earth, the prehistoric Gem War apparently having knocked the planet's history off the course our primary world followed. The panel naturally spent a lot of time on gender issues, a central focus of the show, but there was much more to discuss. One of the series' dominant themes is reconciliation and redemption. We decided Steven's main "superpower" is empathy. Though still a child and far from perfect, he tries very hard to heal even the most unprepossessing "monsters." The very cartoonish art style belies the underlying seriousness of this animated Intimate Adventure program, so its complexities sneak up on the viewer. Do give it a try. The individual episodes are only about twelve minutes long after the commercials are stripped off. Be warned of "continuity lockout" after the first few episodes; the story really needs to be viewed in order.

My husband, Les, also appeared on two panels, one on submarines in science fiction and one on the phenomenon of high-tech magic, fantasy with scientific underpinnings or science so advanced it looks like magic. We attended another panel on submarines, a slide show presentation on real underwater craft of the nineteenth century (and a bit about Jules Verne's Nautilus). One session that delved particularly deeply into its topic tackled the challenge of creating realistic characters with PTSD. There was also a panel on "Writing Outside the Lines," about constructing characters unlike oneself (in gender, race, etc.), a complex and contentious issue.

Les and I participated in the group author signing and had fun talking to people, even though we didn't sell any copies of our books.

ChessieCon is highly book-oriented with lots of sessions slanted toward writers. It also has a full music track. If you live in or near Maryland, do consider joining us some year.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt