Happy Holidays all!  After yesterday’s letter, we received this from yet another Vampire:

Nothing divides the vampire community like the Christmas season. It’s not that Eternals have any particular distaste for gift-giving or snow or any of the other traditions of this time of year. It’s that this moment on the mortal calendar manages to touch on so many of the challenges of our life here on Earth. Humans showing kindness and love, marking the passage of time, enjoying food and drink — who among us isn’t moved in some way by the memories of these pleasures, and the melancholy those memories so often bring on?

And yet I, for one, choose to observe Christmas. Frankly, I like it.

Let’s be clear. It certainly has nothing to do with that fellow Jesus. I was born after his time, but I have met many eternals who knew him, and they have nothing pleasant to say about the whole episode. We’ve all agreed as a community, of course, not to mention the darker aspects of his story, so I’ll put all that aside, but let me be absolutely clear that for me Christmas is not a Christian occasion.

Instead, Christmas is an opportunity to reconnect with the emotions and traditions we all once enjoyed. The holiday is a celebration of charity, mercy, consideration — qualities all too rare here in New Valencia.

What’s more, although some among us choose to treat it as some sort of open buffet, in which the isolated and the lonely are ripe for feeding, I instead think of it as a rare opportunity to connect with humankind in more redeeming ways. During a holiday when the talk is of miracles, and rebirth, and fat men miraculously fitting down chimneys, humans are in the mood for magic, and we, as eternals, are magical creatures. ‘Tis our season, I say. And so: season’s greetings.

Sincerely,

Chester Gaiana