The Last Christmas

As promised, here is my holiday short story.  It begins like this…

He hadn’t thought of himself as anything more than Santa Claus in many years. Since he’d been passed the mantle he’d just enjoyed the magic of the position. He spent three-hundred sixty-four days of the year in his village workshop, with just one night out to deliver toys to all the girls and boys who still believed.

It was a dwindling list of names, but more so this year. Around April the list very nearly cut by half in a single day, and steadily it had fallen until around mid May. After that is dropped in chunks every now and then with one more sharp decline in early October. By December first, when the village usually kicked into overdrive to finish all the toys, there we barely more than a hundred names left, less as he loaded up his sleigh on Christmas Eve.

… you can read the entire thing here.

9 comments

  1. That was awesome! I like the zombie twist. It’s a great change for a Christmas story. Who doesn’t love zombies? Nicely written as well. I think it would make a hillarious picture book. Great job.

  2. Jason, this is REALLY good. I think you should talk to someone about this as a movie idea. It would have to be carefully done, but if it was made right, it would really be an amazing movie. Nice job! (My favorite part was the kids who wished for weapons for Christmas, and BOOM, Santa had them in his sack!)

  3. That’s not bad at all.

    A few points:

    1) I got jerked out of the story in the second paragraph with the number of kids who believed constantly dropping, but it was eventually cleared up. One would hope that even the survivors might have more kids one day.

    2) The exposition of Santa’s magic in the middle of the story really disturbs the pace. Those things are always hard to incorporate (who likes being told the rules), but in a short story, it gets really important for it to be seamless.

    3) Finally, while I liked the idea and the story is well-written, I didn’t attached to any of the characters, including Santa. I’d like to feel like if something happened to him, I’d care more than just knowing kids wouldn’t get their toys.

    All in all though, it was a well-written story. I look forward to what you produce next year.

    -K

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