The Last Christmas Story

It was Christmas morning and a child played with his new toy, a “L’il Scientist” kit. There were test tubes and beakers, scales and diodes, a microscope and telescope, a mass spectrometer, and a pristine particle accelerator buried in the back yard.

He mixed up chemicals for awhile: turning water into wine and back again, learning the joys of vinegar and baking soda, nickel-plating his sister’s glass eye—until the fumes from the sulfur volcano he’d built caused his parents to suggest he play outside.

Disconsolately, he kicked around the faded clumps of grass in the back yard, sharp wind cutting through his hoodie like a knife through the frog he’s dissected and left in the bathtub. “I guess they ain’t found that yet,” he grumbled while kicking at a rock that turned out to be frozen dog poop. To get out of the cold wind he entered the particle accelerator’s bunker. Soon he was flipping switches and watching the readouts as a deep and delightful thrumming filled the building.

Suddenly, fireworks erupted as relativistic heavy ions collided.

“Let’s see what we got here,” he muttered while wheeling out his new double-ultra-microscope. Broken chunks of gold atoms littered his screen like jalopies at a demolition derby. “Cool!” he enthused.

Then he saw a speck of light. Focusing, he realized that it was actually a quickly growing bubble. “Outstanding!” he said, ramping up the magnification. Specks of light were embedded in the bubble like raisins in a muffin. “Imagine that,” he muttered, seeing tiny vortices. He focused on one of the little whirlpools and saw it was composed of millions of tiny sparks, some red, blue, orange, ultramarine and white. He chose one of the sparks near the edge, a yellow-whitish one.

He found that it had dark companions, small clumps of dirt and gas circled about it like horses on a merry-go-round. The big ones looked like swirly marbles and were cool enough, he supposed, but he quickly honed in on the one that had oxygen in its atmosphere and lots of water. He saw land, too, mountains, deserts, and verdant forests. He gasped—roads and buildings! He pushed his microscope all the way to its limit, wishing he’d asked Santa for the triple-ultra kit, until he was just able to make out a small building outside a village, where animals were housed—a barn or manger he supposed. There, three ornately garbed gentlemen offered gifts to a newborn child.

“Billy!” he heard his mother call, “Time for church.”

Reluctantly he turned off the monitor. Too bad, he thought, the bubble universe he’d accidentally created would be gone by the time he returned, evaporated back into the vacuum from where it had emerged. He’d just have to make another one tomorrow, he supposed, turning out the lights as somewhere a wise man noticed that the star that had guided him and the others to Bethlehem had disappeared.

And so will I.

My Goodness

“My goodness, it’s Christmas time again,” said old Aunt Sallie. “Wonder what the Claus brought you this year?”

“Socks,” said little Agamemnon, disbelieving. “And turtle eggs.”

“Chinchilla coat,” Louise reported. “Again!”

“Got me a choo-choo,” Tarvis grinned and then chugged out of the room in the general direction of the kitchen where Maw was serving up breakfast—lots of biscuit, a little bit of gravy, and eggs on the side with a whiff o’ ham squeezins. The only day of the year they ate like this—or wanted to, really.

“Oh, give me a Rome where the buffalos home and the uhm-a-mm-mm-mm-mmm,” she never knew the words, who did?

“I’m going to the Mall tonight.”

“You can’t, stupid, it’s Christmas.”

“Awk. What am I going to do?”

“Come over here, honey, and help me set the table.”

“Do I gotta?”

“If you want some squeezins, honey.”

In one corner of the room, way down on the floor, was an area that didn’t get much attention. It was a place where dust settled despite everyone’s—well, Ma’s—best efforts. Most of this time the area sat behind a big old potato chip can, forgotten, collecting things: a twist-tie, a dried blade of grass, a ball of cat hair, pinhead sized clumps of dirt from who knows where, and hundreds—yes, hundreds—of tiny, almost invisible, dust-mite skulls. Above the ossuary, within an old and dusty web, sat the ruler of this corner of the world, a tiny yellow spider.

Most of the time she snoozed peacefully, waiting for a wayward gnat or some other critter to stumble into her web—it only had to happen once—but this morning was different. Someone finally took the potato chip can away.

“Ew,” cried little Davy. “That’s just gross!”

The cat headed immediately for the corner. “Diego, no!” they cried. “Stop him!”

Diego’s tail swished through the tiny skulls, dust, and webbing like a . . . well, a . . . dustmop. Anyway the next thing the little spider knew she was scurrying ass over teakettle into the middle of the floor. Ominous dark clouds rolled back and forth across her sky, emitting threatening bellows of fear and confusion that she couldn’t hear—but certainly could feel. She was almost trampled many times before reaching the far shore where she skittled beneath immense boxes, bows and ribbon, toys, clothing, fruitcake, and crumpled wrapping paper. Every once in awhile a huge pine needle crashed thundering down. There she found a soaring metallic framework, and realized with joy that the god of spiders had shown her the perfect place for a web.

Sure enough, in the spirit of Christmas, the spider found a little present of her own underneath that Christmas tree: a blue-spruce pox beetle, an invasive species that had hitched a ride in from the country. Cracking open its carapace, the little yellow spider sat down for a fine holiday feast, one that would finally allow her to fulfill her destiny by implanting her eggs in the beetle’s nourishing body before dying in peace, fulfilled. She smiled lovingly down upon the quivering beast beneath her. Sensuously, she impugned its integrity.

“Merry Christmas to all,” she whispered, “and to all a good night!”