Christmas Miscellany 8

Ho Ho Ho! It’s that time once again…time for the annual Not About Lumberjacks Christmas episode. If you’re new, here, eight years ago I gathered up all my shorter short stories (like stocking stuffers) and released them for the holidays. Since then, the effort has grown, but no matter how random the tales are, the last one is always a Christmas story of some sort.

This year’s stories:

• “Crispas Echo” – We travel back to 1985 for a tale of summer school friendship and…Taco Bell!
• “A Very Strange Day (On Our Neighboring Red Planet)” – The first human mission to Mars runs into a very surprising discovery…
• “Dick is Dead” – Two accountants end up unlucky and are forced to attend the funeral of a weird coworker on behalf of their department.
• “Christmas Spirits” – Three famous Christmas ghosts have had enough, and set a pharmaceutical CEO straight.

Disclaimer About “Christmas Spirits”: This story was written well before this week’s murder of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO. I am in no way capitalizing on timely news. Unfortunately, when one writes enough, they are bound to run into releasing a story that carries more weight because of a real-life event. (Example: When Stranger Things released an episode showing murdered children the week of [yet another] U.S. school shooting and began with a disclaimer.) Spoiler Alert: The CEO in this story lives. But…the last story of this year’s Christmas episode is bound to still evoke emotions in some, so I wanted to mention all this up front.

And now, the usual content advisory…

Content Advisory: Spread throughout the four stories making up this year’s Christmas episode are teen drug use, violence (humorous in places, but a couple rough moments in “Christmas Spirits”), teasing, a funeral, corporate greed, and–of course–swearing!

No matter what you celebrate this season (or not), I wish you and yours all the best as we face down the end of another year.

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Credits:

Music: Theme – Ergo Phizmiz. Story – Various, all licensed through Epidemic Sound.

Stories and Narration: Christopher Gronlund.

Episode Transcript >> (Coming Soon)

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