Welcome to the SFR Brigade Holiday Showcase! There are over 30 authors participating in this awesome blog hop, so when you're done reading here, hop on over to the next person. Lots of prizes and giveaways are being offered from each author. The list of participants can be found here: SFR Brigade Holiday Showcase.
Ever look at something we do in our culture that makes you go, "Huh?" I love studying cultures and traditions. We, as humans, look at the traditions of other cultures and wonder where they came from or how those traditions were started. We even look at our own traditions in or own culture and wonder.
Such as Christmas trees. Bringing live trees indoors to put decorations on them is a little odd when you think about it. The tradition is so ingrained that we even have fake trees, just to continue the tradition without having to get a live one. We even have toys and gimmicks that all revolve around the Christmas tree.
Other cultures may look at this tradition and think us very strange indeed. I like to take sentiments like that one step further. How would an alien from outer space interpret human traditions? What would Christmas trees look like to a space alien? Specifically, what would singing Christmas trees look like to an extraterrestrial? Remember those? They were called 'Douglas Fir.'
I couldn't help it. "Meet Douglas Fir" was born from this idea. In this story, a human family introduces Christmas to an extraterrestrial couple they happen to know. If you've read "Aliens in the Barn," it's the family from that story.
Here is a short excerpt. This is right as Alex shows his extraterrestrial friend, Bazin, a Douglas Fir singing Christmas tree:
Eyes popped opened from their disguised
place within the branches along with a mouth that started singing "Jingle
Bells."
The alien let out an uncharacteristic
yelp before lunging forward in a flurry of movement, knocking the tree from
Alex's hands and then stomping it until the music stopped. To Bazin's credit, a
gun didn't appear out of nowhere like last time they were at this truck stop.
He even managed to keep his human disguise.
"What are you doing?" Alex
yelled. "Those are really hard to find!"
"Did you see the size of its
mouth?" Bazin nudged it with his foot. One of the bushy branches covering
an eyeball twitched and he stomped on it again. "It could have eaten your
hand."
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| I learned how to make book covers this past summer. This one is my favorite! |
Thank you so much for reading! What human tradition is your favorite? Or what space alien tradition you've read somewhere made you smile, or a reaction to a strange tradition? Tell me in a comment below. I will be gifting a copy of "Meet Douglas Fir" to 5 commenters (chosen at random / ebook gifted from Amazon).
'Meet Douglas Fir' can be found on Amazon here. 'Meet Douglas Fir' can also be found in "Aliens in the Barn: 4 Short Stories of Mech Alien Romance and Misadventure."
Go check out all the other blog posts of this SFRB Holiday Showcase . Happy reading!
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