24-Dec-2020
Welcome to the last Flash Fiction Friday of the year!
Apparently I have the apocalypse on my mind. Gosh, I don’t know why. It’s not like this year has been that crazy…right?
The Ride of Christmas’s Past
Today’s Flash Fiction Friday is brought to you by:
Driving Around Looking at Lights
A Rabid Snowman
and
Gluten-Free Gingerbread
Narrator 1: Welcome to the Ride of Christmas’s past. Please take a seat in your twentieth century vehicle and we will get started.
Narrator 2: Do up those seat belts, it might be a bumpy ride. Especially after the year 2020.
Narrator 1: A wise precaution. Back before the turn of the century, and even for some time afterward, it was customary to decorate the outside of your living abode with lights during the Christmas season. Many would drive their cars around to look at said lights, partaking the beauty with joy.
Narrator 2: Or stealing ideas for next year’s light display.
Narrator 1: During the late 1900s, the production of strings of Christmas lights became more affordable, giving a greater swath of the populace a chance to use them in displays.
Narrator 2: As soon as they figured out how to make it so when one light went out they didn’t all went out things got much better. Way less acts of violence due to decorating.
Narrator 1: The technology continued to advance, giving the people of that time more options to choose from.
Narrator 2: Which wasn’t always the best thing. The lights on your right were perhaps the most trendy of styles—the icicle lights.
Narrator 1: And let’s not forget the infamous twinkling lights.
Narrator 2: You mean the seizure inducers?
Narrator 1: Indeed.
Narrator 2: Then the dumpster fire of 2020 hit.
Narrator 1: The Christmas of 2020 was impacted by many factors, but it was the next year in which, as they say, everything changed.
Narrator 2: Don’t worry, kids, those are not real snowmen.
Narrator 1: The likeness is uncanny, is it not? It was early in the winter season of 2021 when the snowmen began coming to life. At first it seemed a wonderful thing.
Narrator 2: Then it hit the fan hard.
Narrator 1: The tale of Frosty the Snowman had warned humans that snowmen could be inhabited by magical being. Alas, the cautionary story had turned into a children’s fable many years before, leaving the human race unprepared for the Snowman Apocalypse of 2021.
Narrator 2: Maybe if the humans hadn’t made so many snowmen, brought them to life, then left them alone to melt in the sun—a horrible way to go according to the snowmen—things would have been different.
Narrator 1: Here we have a scrolling memorial wall of all those killed that winter by the snowmen. People described them as rabid dogs, going after anyone they could sink their icicle teeth into. Men, women, and children.
Narrator 2: Even dogs. After all, no one likes getting peed on. Yellow snow is a thing, and the smell…
Narrator 1: It took society a few years to deal with the snowmen.
Narrator 2: You call banning the creation of snowmen on penalty of death dealing with them?
Narrator 1: Even now there are always a few people who dabble into the lore of the snowmen. They usually do not survive.
Narrator 2: And now that all police and most households are armed with UV flood lights the snowmen don’t survive long either.
Narrator 1: Just as the snowmen problem abated, a new issue arose.
Narrator 2: Did you just try to make a pun?
Narrator 1: Did I?
Narrator 2: I’m not sure you could say gingerbread really rises.
Narrator 1: By this point the world had realized there was more magic in it than they had thought. The snowmen had, in a small part, prepared them for this. However, no one was prepared for the gluten-free gingerbread men to come to life.
Narrator 2: Turns out gluten is a magic salve of sorts, and without it, any magic that goes into food is corrupted. And when I say corrupted, I mean they forge themselves weapons out of candy used to decorate gingerbread houses, grow two ten times their size, and go on rampages that make Godzilla look like a little child.
Narrator 1: Here we have footage shot of the destruction of New York. This man and his family were hewn down by a hundred foot tall candy cane just before they got over the bridge and out of the city.
Narrator 2: Gingerbread wasn’t the only gluten-free food to rise up—yes I did make that pun—in rebellion. Bread, cookies, crackers…the worst was probably the breakfast cereals. They would expand and fill an entire town, and could only be vanquished with a flood of water, which left a soggy mess.
Narrator 1: It took the world three years to get rid of all the artificially gluten-free food. Scientists worked feverishly to cure any gluten intolerances and allergies in people.
Narrator 2: They do say that necessity is the mother of all invention.
Narrator 1: That brings us to a modern Christmas celebration, which looks much like the mid 1900s. Simple yet elegant. There are some places that do not allow Christmas decorations. Those parts of the world are hoping to be set free from this oppression soon.
Narrator 2: What do you think could be next? Reindeer uprising? Trees that impale people? Maybe it’s better we skip Christmas.
Narrator 1: Or you could live on the dangerous side.
Narrator 2: And get dead.
Narrator 1: There is that.
Holiday Flash Fiction Categories!
Tradition:
Decorating cookiesPicking out a Christmas TreeDriving around looking at lights- Staying up until midnight to hear the church bells ring
Going into the woods to cut down your own treeWatching favorite holiday filmsTaking one of the men playing around with the deep fryer (while trying to cook an additional “better” turkey) to the ER for 2nd and 3rd degree burn- PJ pictures on or near the stairs of all the kids Christmas morning
- The family sleeping around the Christmas tree the Friday before Christmas
Christmas stockings made by grandma
Object:
A Rabid SnowmanReindeerAn old nutcrackerGrandma’s crotched snowflakes- Advent Calendar
Krampus’ switchThe heirloom tatted ornament that has been dunked in sugar water, starched, , and modge podged so many times it’s hard to tell what it originally was…(resembles an oblong Easter egg that’s been scrambled) but it’s been out for every Christmas since the oldest family member remembers, it’s traditionWooden Christmas signs bought at Ensign- Christmas village on the fireplace
- Death Star tree-topper
Food:
Gluten Free GingerbreadFruitcakeCranberry Jell-o SaladHomemade divinity- Christmas crack chocolate
Christmas Kibble (a cookie that looks like kibble)Aspic SaladWild Rice- Raspberry cream cheese desert
- Christmas sugar cookies
