Showing posts with label Holidays. Show all posts

Thursday, January 1, 2026

Happy New Year!

Wednesday, December 31, 2025

Just Another New Year's Eve: A Free New Year's Eve Short-Short

The jets and drones exploded over the Mississippi River as they had for the past four nights, during each of the raids on the Mothership. Supposed to be our protectors, our rebellion, they had become little more than fireworks bursting over the water, reflecting failure against the rolling surface of the river.

"Are you going to make a resolution?" Markie asked me.

"Why?" I responded. "What's the point? We're all going to be killed when the military stops giving them targets to distract them from the rest of us."

"Tradition?" she asked.

I smirked. She still could make me laugh.

Chemicals clouded into fog banks in the distance, and the screams of those trapped inside sounded small and so, so far away. As if they didn't matter. As if they wouldn't be us in the coming days.

"Okay, for tradition," I said as I pulled her to me. "I'll finally give up drinking. How 'bout that?"

She laughed. "And now that it's free for the taking with all the stores busted up and ready for looting." She paused. "Any idea what time it is?"

I made a pantomime of examining my watch, which had stopped at 4:45 PM three days ago after the EMP took out the town's power. "It's gotta be midnight somewhere," I said.

We kissed and watched the fireworks.

-- Sean Taylor

Friday, December 26, 2025

Heri za Kwanzaa!

May your meditations and re-assessments help
you become the person you want and need to be!

Happy Boxing Day!

Thursday, December 25, 2025

Merry Christmas!

Wednesday, December 24, 2025

New Poetry for the Christmas

Far Away in a Manger

Hail Mary, full of grace

Did childbirth hurt on that first Christmas

Or was labor immaculate too

Free of contact

Free of pain?

Blessed art thou among women

If that were truly the case

Pray for us in our hour of death

Because we seem to be racing toward it

O come, O come Emmanuel

To ransom faith from religion

To remind those who claim to follow

That love still covers multitudes of sins

Until the Son of God appears

Not that they’d recognize you today

Because you’re not white, or Protestant,

Or born in the United States

Rejoice! Rejoice! And mourn in lonely exile

Kyrie eleison! Christe eleison!

Oh, the little town of Bethlehem

Seems light-years and centuries away

From our land of the free

Our home of brave believers

Who disregard and disrespect the stranger

Who mock and ignore the poor

Who hide our nation’s sins under a bushel

And tear them from the pages of school textbooks

How far away is that manger now

As we trade no crib for a golden ballroom

And worship a painted calf

Parading in the skin of a bull

The only lowing of cattle

Is the bellowing

From the pulpits of government

The baby is crying

We should all be crying

Blessed is the fruit of thy womb

Of all wombs: red, yellow, black, white

Both foreign and domestic

Created in the image of God

Endowed with inalienable rights

The stars look down where they lay

To see what? —

Hail Mary, full of grace

Remember us in this, the hour of our death

We do not live in the blessings of the immaculate

We live in the world of touch and pain

Where beings from man to woman and back again

Must bump against

The bulk of the other

All day, every day, and I imagine all that bumping

Must be what causes us to hate each other

Enough to put people in cages, enough to bomb innocents

Be near me, I pray, our King of Peace. Amen. Amen.

Incarnate

They say the secret miracle of Christmas

Is Immanuel, God with us,

They say it is the Word becoming flesh

And dwelling among us.

I hear their words,

But I feel they miss the point:

We are already incarnate.

Here from the moment we stood upright,

The day we fashioned clubs,

The year we scribbled pictures onto cave walls.

God has always been with us

Because we were already here.

Some say the meaning of Christmas

Is the newborn king,

The Prince of Peace, the son given,

And yet again,

The words fail to reach

Our incarnate ears of flesh.

Lips praise peace, hands and wills abhor it,

A grand idea, but it’ll never work

In the real world of mucous and muscle.

A beautiful notion fluttering too high above the garbage

For us to attempt,

So we sing songs about it instead.

Tuesday, December 23, 2025

Free Ghost Story for Christmas: The Kit Bag by Algernon Blackwood

The Kit Bag

by Algernon Blackwood

In the grand tradition of the Christmas ghost story, here is a seasonal tale from one of the greats, Algernon Blackwood (certainly one of my favorite horror writers). For more fantastic classic gothic and ghost stories for the holidays, visit The Classic Horror Blog.

Or find the audiobook version here or here.

======================

When the words ‘Not Guilty’ sounded through the crowded courtroom that dark December afternoon, Arthur Wilbraham, the great criminal KC, and leader for the triumphant defense, was represented by his junior; but Johnson, his private secretary, carried the verdict across to his chambers like lightning.

‘It’s what we expected, I think,’ said the barrister, without emotion; ‘and, personally, I am glad the case is over.’

There was no particular sign of pleasure that his defence of John Turk, the murderer, on a plea of insanity, had been successful, for no doubt he felt, as everybody who had watched the face felt, that no man had ever better deserved the gallows.

‘I’m glad too,’ said Johnson. He had sat in the court for ten days watching the face of the man who had carried out with callous detail one of the most brutal and cold-blooded murders of recent years.

The counsel glanced up at his secretary. They were more than employer and employed; for family and other reasons, they were friends. ‘Ah, I remember, yes,’ he said with a kind smile, ‘and you want to get away for Christmas. You’re going to skate and ski in the Alps, aren’t you? If I was your age I’d come with you.’

The Holiday Watchlist

Holiday flicks I try to watch each year:

Anna and the Apocalypse
The Hogfather
Rare Exports
Black Christmas (1974)
Gremlins
Violent Night
Christmas in Connecticut
Muppet Christmas Carol
Santa's Slay
Scrooged
Slay Belles
It's A Wonderful Life
Letters to Satan Claus
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
The Little Drummer Boy
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
A Charlie Brown Christmas

Wednesday, December 17, 2025

Io Saturnalia!

Enjoy your celebration of the solstice!

Tuesday, December 16, 2025

Free Holiday Short Story -- "Nor Doth He Sleep"

This story originally appeared in Cyber Age Adventures Magazine and is collected in my short story collections Sin and Error Pining and Show Me A Hero by Taylorverse Books.

Nor Doth He Sleep
By Sean Taylor
An iHero Entertainment Holiday Story

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men."
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As the knife bit into the girl’s back, it pierced to the hilt, and a wet, red stream poured from the incision. Red and green lights from the street decorations blinked into the alley, flicking the scene from gray dirt and faded concrete to colorized extravagance and back to gray again The man watching impotently from a few feet away jerked against the two grunts holding his arms, but he couldn’t pull away. His fiancé lay on the ground, face pressed against the pavement, sputtering and coughing through her tears. On her back sat a third thug, a slug of a man in a denim jacket, his wrists all but rolling fat skin back to cover the cuffs as he played with the knife, wiggling it without removing it from the meat a few inches above the girl’s waist.

“Let her go!” he yelled, but in response all he got was a punch in his gut.

The two guys holding him laughed when he gasped to regain his breath.

“Let her go, damn it!”

Another gut punch.

“Or what? You’ll cry?” asked the tallest of the thugs, a white guy with green hair whipped about like a pretty boy in one of those Japanese comic books.

“Or cough up blood?” said the other thug, a squat muscle-head with fat arms stuck to his otherwise fit torso. “Or puke on us?”

Pretty Boy glared at Fat Arms, and he shut up.

Happy Hanukkah!

Thursday, December 11, 2025

Fave Holiday/Winter Themed Short Stories

What are your favorite holiday/Winter short stories?

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of short stories. I still consider them the finer art when it comes to writing stories at all. So, I'm curious what are you favorite holiday-themed or Winter-themed short stories?

The following are mine: