Saturday, December 19, 2015

28 Xmas Stories 22: Their lives are endless quests.

La ville où tout le monde doit aimer toute l'année
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In this town, Xmas tree ornaments are hand-carved, and each ornament is a likeness of someone in the town. Each person in town who is old enough to do this has his or her own Xmas tree, and carves the ornaments for that tree by themselves. Each and every person the ornament-carver cares about has an ornament carved in their honor and hung on the person’s tree. The likenesses are remarkable: the townspeople, one and all, are very skilled at this after so many generations.

But what is more astonishing than all that is why they do this: these tiny icons of their loved ones are created and put up because the more trees one’s image is on, the more powerful the Xmas magic is for that person, and hence the more of their wishes will be granted come Xmas morning. Getting an ornament hung for you on someone else’s tree increases the odds that all your Xmas wishes will be granted.

Because of this oddity the people of the town are both very social and unfailingly nice to each other. They hold doors open, help the neighbors with yardwork, volunteer for charity fundraisers. They offer help to those who need it, compliment each other, never argue. They share what they have and  in general everyone treats everyone else as though each were royalty.

Every person, man and woman and boy and girl, too, tries to make as many new friends as he or she can throughout the year. Their lives are endless quests to be as nice as humanly possible to as many people as can be.

It seems as though all this niceness, being primarily motivated by the desire to have bigger and more spectacular Xmas wishes granted, would start to wear on a person after a while, would seem fake. But the wishes don’t work that way: fake goodwill towards other townspeople garners one nothing, so the feeling is genuine.


And anyway, even if the behavior was fake it’s still a pretty good way to live. 



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