Halo Ray’s Christmas log…

I’m wearing a passive-aggressive hat which says ‘Ho Ho Ho’ and has a little white fluffy ball at the tip which keeps bobbing into my eyeline. I’m also three quarters of the way through a bottle of wine which has made the crew dinner somewhat bearable. We’re all gathered in the dining hall for a raucous and rowdy celebration of a solstice on a planet most of us have never seen.

Christmas aboard the Persephone is more painful than a dozen cane strokes. I don’t like Christmas. You don’t get to choose your feelings for Christmas. You get to be jolly and holly and a big fat fucking cypher for reckless consumerism and the cloying sort of familial love that exists precisely nowhere in reality. That’s what I’ve been telling myself between drinks.

Some people like to really get into Christmas. Jubilee Flundersquidge has been bouncing around all morning beaming and informing everyone who will listen that she’s excited for all the little blessings of Christmas.

“It’s so joyous,” she trills, entirely unaware of how vomitous it all is. It would be one thing if she genuinely felt joy, but she’s just feeling a bloody big dose of Hapsters and following the tinsel clad cues which are stuck all around the ship.

“What did you get for Christmas, Ray?”

I glare at the asker. I didn’t get anything for Christmas. Only good girls get presents, and it’s been a long time since I was on that list. I got some additional rations, but everyone in the coalition gets those. A 1% holiday bonus, hurray. Fortunately, the answer to the question was never important in the first place.
Continue reading →