Cub Raising Association

First Christmas (short story)

"Ssh-shismas?"

Some weeks had gone by since the birth of the nox and the days had gotten colder and colder. During this time, they had hired a few new employees and aside from getting them used to how things worked around here, everything had passed rather smoothly. It could be said that they had gotten into a rhythm and the days went by quickly.

If not for Xie Luan's ability to transverse every time he slept, he would have not noticed that it was nearing that time of the year.

Out of curiosity, he had asked Xia Qi if they celebrated any holiday around this time. Finding out that it was not the case, he had considered it thoroughly and decided that the cubs also needed some light and joy in the depths of the dark and cold winter months.

And so, he had now gathered the employees here in order to discuss this very serious matter.

"En, I want to let the cubs experience christmas."

For this, Xie Luan had gone up to the attic at his house and dug out the boxes containing all the christmas decorations which had not been used in a while. As he could not take them all at once, he had slowly brought them over during this past week, one box at a time. A hassle.

Luckily storage was not an issue. His room at the staff dorm was still very empty and had plenty of space for him to store them. Was this what people called fortune in misfortune?

"Ok, but just, what is sh-rrr-ismas?" Xia Qi tried her best to pronounce it the way the youth had.

"Christmas is a human tradition--"

Xie Luan ponded on how to explain it and decided to keep it simple, "Roughly 2000 years ago.." Telling them a very short background story, he then mentioned some main points such as the 24 days build-up, the decorating, the christmas tree and the giving of presents.

"Sounds fun! Do all humans do it?" Feng Weixian suddenly blurted out.

Xie Luan was not done talking about presents and so faltered for a second, then said, "No. Not all humans, we have several religions, each with their own traditions." He thought for a bit. "Around the same time as christmas I think there are also hanukkah, kwanzaa and, oh, las, ehm, las posadas which also has a connection to the story I told you earlier. There is of course also diwali, but that is celebrated a little earlier," Xie Luan nonchalantly counted them on his fingers as he spoke.

The others seemed shocked at how many different holidays and traditions there were. Even just the fact that humans had several religions appeared to be something abnormal. Most races only had one god or goddess they worshiped, sometimes that god or goddess was even being worshiped by more than one race.

Xie Luan wondered how they would react if he told them that some human religions had several deities they worshiped...

"Anyway, although I said that some holidays are connected to religions, you don't necessarily have to have that religion or be especially religious in order to celebrate it. Christmas, for example, has become more and more commercialized. Not many people in my country have that religion but christmas is still being celebrated, especially in bigger cities. So you don't have to worry about that." [1]

After having explained what christmas entailed, everyone seemed excited to try this new and exotic holiday. As Xie Luan had brought all the decorations, it was also not something that would cost them a lot of money to do. It was therefore decided that they would try celebrating this "shrismas".

Following Xie Luan's lead, they slowly integrated christmas into their days.

The first thing they did was to cut out big squares of paper. The cubs got two squares each and they were meant to leave their hand or paw print on the papers. However, surprisingly, cubs and paint-covered paws did not go too well together.