[ SECRET POST #3622 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3622 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 44 secrets from Secret Submission Post #518.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Children's stories about horrible "Christmas miracles" almost always make me sad, angry, or both. I mean, I kind of like "The Elves and the Shoemaker," because the sad bit where the shoemaker and his wife are so poor they can only afford the leather to make one pair of shoes to sell isn't dwelt on so much as their improved good fortune when the elves start helping, and then they pay the elves back and everyone's happy.

But the only versions of "The Little Match Girl" I like are a musical retelling aimed at adults that points out how horrifying it is and sort of has a happy ending, and Pratchett's mention in Hogfather, where Death is supposed to give a freezing starving little girl her death and instead he's horrified and shoves her into the arms of a rich couple and tells them to get her someplace warm, because fuck hliday stories that focus on others' poverty and misery as a way of making people who aren't as bad off feel grateful.

I just saw another of this kind of kids' book today, about an old woman living in a snowbound shack who wakes up cold and goes through her bare cupboards, then takes her accordian into town to go busking, only to earn nothing and end up curled up in a freezing ball on a streetcorner, until she goes to the pawnshop and pawns her accordian so she can eat. Then some guy steals her money on the way out the door, and she goes to the church, but the thief bowls her over on his way out from stealing the poor box. So she goes in and straightens up the nativity figurines that were knocked over, and struggles back to her shack through the snow. But she collapses before she can get home.

Then the little nativity figures find her unconscious (or dead, honestly, it seemed like the kind of book where it was gonna turn out that she'd died after all) and bring her back to her shack. The three kings go to the pawnshop and pawn their gold and jewels and buy her accordian, then go to the supermarket and buy food. Joseph takes his tiny axe and cuts firewood and a tiny Christmas tree. Tiny Mary and tinier Jesus sit with the old lady on her hard cold bed, and when the wise men bring the food and Joseph brings the firewood, they cook her a meal, decorate the tiny tree, and leave her the rest of the money. When the old lady wakes up she's overjoyed to be warm and fed and Joseph even fixed the holes in the floor, and she eats her meal and plays her accordian and is happy.

And I'm like, the fuck did I just read? (It was actually a wordless picture book, but eh) Because apparently this whole town is okay with a atarving old lady living outside of town in a tiny shack with no food or heat and then letting her starve and freeze. Even the priest. But the inanimate nativity figurines save her, so that's okay? What about the other 364 days a year? Or is there some Christmas magic that makes otherwise decent people assholes so people actually give a shit the rst of the year?