Guest Post

Ho Ho Humbug

 

You  should go home
once in a while, especially if you  has
moved far away and established a life somewhere else.  Such a trip tells you who you were, how far
you have come, and why the heck you left. My favorite holiday is HallowThanksMasNewSuperTinesDay.
Bring on the brownies. 

 

Holiday traditions have inspired my writing because they are
often a pain in any body part unfortunate enough to be exposed. The seven last
words are “we have always done it this way.” That’s not really a problem until
you get together with some other family and have to negotiate who gets to open
presents first, or when do you overeat dinner, or which team do you scream
about? 

I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy the holidays when I was a
kid, but since I’ve been grown, it’s just another excuse for drinking another
class of wine and mainlining the fudge. One tradition is to decorate my mom’s
place on Thanksgiving weekend. We have it down to 2.5 hours flat from attic to
tree-lighting, and then we quickly find something on AMC to watch—ANYTHING but
the Christmas Story—so we don’t to talk about stuff we don’t need to talk about.
 This will be my first year without my
daughter home during the holidays, as she has moved out to the wilds of
Phoenix, and I’m interested to see how that works out. She and I did not have
much in the way of holiday traditions, and now I will probably have even less. 

Holidays often bring out the hostility that merely lurks the
rest of the year, and that always gives me purchase to observe how we interact,
and what stories we tell over and over. 
The stories we tell about our lives define our lives, and it seems to me
that editing those stories might be a great idea for all of us to have a
happier new year. 

 

One of the main conflicts between Fiona and Maven is that
Maven sees the need to change up the fairy tales. Fiona wants to maintain the
Charles Perrault versions at all costs, and she fears the loss of Faery (the
place, not the beings) against the onslaught of fiction, cyberspace and new
media. 

Maven has not had a happy life, as she did not see
eye-to-eye with her family, and now she is alone, homeless and hanging by the
last shred of her dignity. Because she identifies with the also-ran characters,
Maven thinks ugly sisters, trolls and dragons ought to have a shot at a wish,
not just blonde soprano mouse-and-bird wranglers. She has always felt that
traditions have let her down. 

So I’ve written what happens when she finds herself in a
story situation. It makes for funnier situations, especially when Maven finds
that her expectations are not met. Traditions are great inspirations for
stories as long as the writer is outside them. I still like happily ever afters,
but how they work out needs a little help. That is why Maven is a fairy
godmother. She can swirl up little anomalies in the space-time continuum to
help someone get what she wants, even if it makes Fiona angry, and it does.

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