“Merry Christmas!” Jan expected her greeting to echo through the dome unanswered, and certainly didn’t expect an argument.
“Well, technically, it won’t be Christmas for another 37 minutes.”
She pivoted lightly, to confirm that the voice she heard was indeed Paul, most stubborn man in the tiny colony (and that’s saying something for a group who had committed to leaving their entire planet behind for an idea).
“Not that argument again,” Jan said. “It’s Christmas, or, even by your calculations, Christmas Eve. We’ve been over the whole Mars-calendar vs. Earth-calendar argument a hundred times, and sidereal day and the solar day conflict is mostly one for pedants. It’s Christmas. Paul, give it a rest.”
“Well, since it is Christmas Eve, can you give me one more chance to make my case?” Without waiting for an answer, he did. Paul explained at length the need for the colony to establish its own culture and traditions, ones that honored the past but established new foundations for them as Marsmen.
“Martians!” Jan tried. “That one is a long dead—a minority view and sexist to boot.”
That just seemed to fire Paul up even further. He got louder, until his arguments seemed to block out the world. Jan couldn’t hear the gentle but ubiquitous fan, and she even missed the sound of the airlock cycling open, closed, and, a few minutes later, open and closed again.
Finally, Paul threw up his hands. “You’re impossible,” he said, turning as if to go. His shift in position froze Jan in hers. Behind Paul sat an immature but impossibly tall pine tree, Charlie Brown skinny but standing proud in the Martian atmosphere.
Her eyes shifted left, right, and then out beyond the dome. There she saw what appeared to be a series of hoofprints leading away through the pink Martian sand.
She turned to Paul dumbfounded.
“Now,” he said, “it’s Christmas.”
About the author:
Greg Beatty lives in Bellingham, Washington. He writes everything from jokes about cows to essays on cooking disasters, and has more dog friends than human friends. Two years ago he had the perfect Danish, and recently he’s been taking baking classes to try to match that pastry at home. You can find a number of Greg’s stories on Payhip: https://payhip.com/GregBeatty
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