everyone's lost but me...

Since Christmas could no longer be trusted to behave itself, it was confined to cell #17 in the A block of the Guy Fawkes Holiday Correctional Facility. After Christmas tried to expand it’s area of influence to include all of November through January, Thanksgiving and New Years filed an injunction. During the exhaustive investigation that followed, it was discovered that Christmas had set up 2 dummy corporations called “Black Friday” and “Christmas in July” to launder money received through the bribery and intimidation of other holidays. At the trial, Thanksgiving hadn't been shy about it’s objections to the turkey and pilgrim decorations being entirely neglected in favor of the earlier and earlier Christmas sale trimmings. Halloween and Valentine's Day had actually been impressed with Christmas' initiative, but also recognized the danger in expanding any one holiday to 90 days. In the end, even the Claus' pleas for leniency were ignored. Christmas was charged with Ra

I found it collapsed and unconscious in an alley behind a bar, most of its decorations removed or stolen. My first thought was relief. It had been missing since the 23 of December, but it was now January 6 and Christmas had long since past. The kids' emotional wounds had nearly healed. The realization that their tree had abandoned them turned our holiday into a horror show. Feelings of anger rose up from within as I recalled the night it left in an angry, drunken stupor, trampling nearly all of the presents under it’s care. (this was not much of a problem for Charlotte's new teddy bear, but the crystal vase and the life sized origami hedgehog...). The kids had picked out the little tree themselves. I had seen the potential for trouble but was assured that its “habit” would never affect its work. We decorated it with heirloom ornaments from my Grandmother and Great Grandmother. I now imagined all of them strewn about in back alleys all over town as a result of weeks of unknown