A Speculative Christmas

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~ by N. E. Lilly (December 2000) ~

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This may seem obvious to some, but to others, blind-sided by the holiday rush, it isn't as evident. We don't take the time to realize everything that is truly speculative in the holiday season.

I myself only realized a few years ago that the Holidays are filled with speculative fiction. Think about it, Elves? Plus flying reindeer? Plus an immortal man who can travel over the entire world in a single night? You do the math.

Sit down some evening and list all the things that can be included under the umbrella term 'speculative fiction' (meaning science fiction, fantasy, and horror) and you may surprise yourself. To save you time I've listed and described some of the most notorious of the Holiday specials.

A Christmas Carol is a story about time-travelling ghosts. This story has been redone and modernized more times than you can shake a stick at. Scrooged, starring Bill Murray, is a slightly fractured take on A Christmas Carol where a television executive discovers the true meaning of Christmas.
It's A Wonderful Life is a Jimmy Stewart classic where a disembodied spirit (or angel) takes a man to an alternate universe where he had never been born.
The Nutcracker is, all jokes aside, a wonderful fantasy about a wooden toy that transforms into a fairy prince and battles giant rats. You would be hard pressed not to find some dance company performing it when the Holidays roll around.
How The Grinch Stole Christmas is about some fantasy village where a green hermit tries to destroy the joyful holiday celebration of some who beings. It has been a holiday classic for as long as I can remember- moving from a smallish book, to a short television special, to a film extravaganza starring Jim Carrey.
The Star Wars Holiday Special was an ill-conceived stab at transforming a story in the Star Wars universe into a holiday classic (with Bea Arthur of Maude and Golden Girls fame) which is only notable because it included Boba Fett's first appearance (until Episode IV was recently reworked).

What does it mean to your business?

How could an entire month and a half of movies, television shows and stories about generosity benefit you, your business, and speculative fiction in general? Hmm... let me think...

The Holidays have come to mean easy money for everybody. Whether you're a hack writer working on the holiday episode of the X-files or a simple hobby shop owner selling to the masses- The Holidays mean moolah.

Holiday themed merchandise around the Holidays is as almost as sure a sale as Star Wars merchandise at any time of the year. (Yet the Star Wars Holiday episode was never shown again. Go figure.) That's probably why we see so many Holiday episodes of our favorite shows, so many adaptations of other Holiday classics, and so many re-runs of the original Holiday classics.

Aside from the strictly Holiday fare people are also buying gifts for children (and the inner-children of their friends). Speculative fiction businesses are the most likely to reap the benefits of this seasonal surge in business- whether the gift being bought is a toy, game, movie, or book.

The Holidays seem to be a time when you can slip the speculative fiction medicine in with the Holiday sugar. People in general are more likely to listen to speculative fiction stories during the Holidays than at any other time of the year. Granted it seems to be Speculative Fiction Lite for the most part, but I'll take what I can get.