A Christmas short story: Christmas Spirit

Louise lives in a Christmas Museum – or so she likes to tell people. Every year end, boxes upon boxes are pulled out from the storeroom – a small hole in the wall filled to the brim with holiday decorations of all shapes, colours and forms. None of them match. Each box is a menagerie of ornaments bought at holiday markets or picked up on Christmases away from home or at Boxing Day clearance sales. Louise cared for each ornament equally.

Dusting out the table cloth covered in wreaths and berries, Louise took great pride in laying the dining table – the centrepiece of her new home. She then broke out the chair covers and changed the cases of the few couch cushions she had. This is just the start of it, she thought, eyeing her plain tree. It would have to wait for the weekend, when her nieces and nephews would dig through her ornament collection and decorate the tree in what she was sure would be an expression of love and joy.