Space Season
by Zella Christensen
I miss Christmas. Now, in the black emptiness of space, we float in a ship with no chimney to slide down, and our ancestral mythologies are obsolete. We don't preserve Earthling traditions for our children, the first ship-born generation. Somehow, skipping Christmas is harder than letting go of the saints I prayed to all my Earth-bound life. Xan, my daughter, learns about them in school along with the Greco-Roman pantheon and the Maya priesthood. Xan, whose name I chose because it sounded like something from the science fiction magazines my grandpa kept in his basement, doesn't pray for intercession or write letters to Santa.
We tried getting rid of the months as well, unmooring ourselves from the meaningless 365-day year. We wanted to be free of our Earth lives, to be new creatures, space creatures, creatures of darkness and stars. Somehow, though, being lost in time was more frightening than losing ourselves in the vast geography of space. We finally kept the year and its old-fashioned months, so tonight is December twenty-fourth. Christmas Eve, I can't help thinking.
