Addendum

"We don't have to get a real tree this year. Also I was thinking about going to bed early on the 31st." - future prison inmates

Legal Clarification

It is now illegal to play or listen to Christmas music. That is, in your science fiction setting where future nations try to unify populations flung across planets and space stations by enforcing a universal culture right down to standardizing colors for book covers (military scifi has a diamond pattern).

Merry Christmas!

See title.

Profound Christmas Question

Could the reason for falling fertility around the world be Santa? He's afraid he can't keep up. If so, has he been sabotaging efforts to leave our little world? The second doesn't necessarily follow from the first, of course. He may intend a franchise once space colonization is accomplished.

A Christmas Saga

A young man shuffled along beneath disorderly seasonal lights which lent character to flat streets and sidewalks distinguished for most of the year by imperfect conditions alone, cracks and weeds and a chip broken off. One might imagine them to have pools and depressions.
"With all the classics and specials, you'd think I'd have some idea what the true meaning of Christmas is." His thoughts were something like that, though not so organized; in that at least his state comported with the environment.
Just then, he vanished and appeared before a council of mystical adepts who said, "Aid us! Free us from the Three Christmas Terrors. Only someone from another world where the season is as it should be can do it. The first is a rider of a sleigh swifter than slander who corrects the count of every chimney that the taxes might be made more oppressive. The second is the chorus whose carols cause madness, nor is their thirst appeased till the house has nothing left for those who live there. The third is the tribe of butchers whose duty is to hang heads from every tree in Browngird Forest."
The young man did exactly that, and in so doing he discovered the truth of Christmas in search and struggle. Never again, when he was returned to his world, did he neglect a quest for the perfect present or quail when invited to watch a seasonal movie for the fifth time that year.
Finis

Addendum

On another note, how many Christmas spaceships have you seen? Looks like fantasy wins again, losers!

Christmas Dragons

Anybody else seeing more Christmas dragon decorations? I don't object, but neither do I understand. I suppose the typical dragon wants to receive presents, but so does everybody else. Especially characters from Bluey, apparently.

The Spirit of the Chimney

A week later and I finally realize I should have been talking about "santasy" all this time.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas.
























----> Merry Christmas <----

But Once a Year

"Gentlemen! Our unprecedented new advertising campaign." The executive pressed a button on the table. An image appeared behind him of an orbital platform which, even as they watched, began ejecting payloads. "Within one hour, we will have delivered a complimentary bar of soap and a coupon to every household on the planet."
Amid the clapping, one junior executive said, "Now that's what I call a merry Christmas!"
"How so?"
"Well, because it's almost Christmas and we're delivering presents like Santa."
"You mean this has already been done? Why didn't anyone tell me? This is a debacle! Stop the launches!"
It was too late. Christmas had already come.
Finis

Chilling Science Fiction Tales

In the distant future, people will think of coal as a rare and valuable present because only Earth has any. Boo!

Ancient Mysteries

Do you think the aliens built the pyramids like that to stop Santa from landing on the roof? Probably he's the enemy of all aliens. They're against gifts is the main reason. They slow down technological progress.

It Continues to be Christmas

Merry Christmas still!

The Too-True Meaning of Christmas

One winter, the priests of Wessario and the people all joined together in supplication, chanting, "Great Farden, the sun in the day and the sun in the night, the bridge across every chasm, the inventor of what is good and imprisoner of what is improper, answer our prayer and our question."
Farden stepped among them, glittering, and said, "What is your question, mortals?"
Everyone knelt except those who fell prostrate. "Great Farden, this wonderful celebration, this Christmas, what is it? Why do we celebrate it?"
Farden smiled at their simplicity. "Christmas is simply the day we choose to commemorate the birth of the Savior, the Son of God." "You have a son, O Farden?"
"Uh . . ."
"Where is he? What is his name? What are his powers?"
Farden looked upon the radiant faces of the mortals as they pressed closer and closer. He gulped. "Uh, well, you see . . . Here, drink from this flask. Be merry and whatnot."
As the people passed around the miraculous flask Farden gave them, they forgot all about that stuff he really, really shouldn't have said. He listened to a bunch of carols later and hoped Santa wouldn't mind a little memory-erasing, though the bigger problem was probably reaching other worlds like his in the first place.

Merry Christmas!
Finis

Christmas Musings

Could it be that all our stories about Santa's sleigh are really about a spaceship and Santa lived his whole life on it? The North Pole workshop is also on the spaceship. You can upgrade it with currencies your elves collect through dispatch missions. Rudolph is a product of genetic engineering, of course.

New Book Technology

Even now engineers are designing books that can eat other books right there on the shelf. Do you have a plan to deal with that? Watch out which gifts you open this Christmas.

Addender

Every year, the space colonies have big debates about whether to alter the climate for Christmas. Boy, will those get nasty.

Christmas Fantasy

Now that Christmas has started, it's time to start writing fantasy in which people celebrate Christmas. There's no need to explain it. They just do.

Peril of the AI Ghosts

The chief engineer reported. "Our AI is better every day. We project that to continue for at least 2,500 years and no more than 5,750 years."
The board acknowledged the report and moved on to other business. The public was not so blasé when it saw the camera phone pictures of the presentation which a leaker posted. Internet analysts followed every implication to its most unreasonable but logical conclusion, and one such could not be endured.
"Better AI means worse AI ghosts!" That was the cry on message boards, imageboards, news aggregators, and livestreams. Nor did those responsible have a satisfactory answer.
"This will increase productivity."
"It's October!"
"The economy will boom."
"It's halfway over!"
"You'll see results by Christmas."
"It's Halloween soon!"
The largest Halloween demonstration of all time began, and as the vampires, witches, and horsemen holding their heads lay about with their axes in the AI development facilities, economists cried but the community-minded who bore a love for the human experience far greater and deeper than number-lust cheered.
Finis

Merry Christmas

See title.