fandomtownies | Covent Garden Flowers; Tuesday [11/27].

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Covent Garden Flowers; Tuesday [11/27].

Okay.

Okay, wow.

That was...a lot of poinsettias in the flower shop today, greeting Astrid with nearly aggressive bursts of red the moment she opened the door, finding it difficult to even maneuver around then enough to make her way to the counter, which was practically covered in them, and she had to move a particularly big one that was sitting right on the chair, struggling a bit with it in her hands because there was hardly anywhere else to put it. But she found a spot, got settled behind the counter, faintly irritated, but figuring once she got into her book, it might be kind of nice to feel like she was just surrounded by flowers in a little hidden alcove of sorts.

Because she was definitely hidden there behind the counter, somewhere. If you looked closely, you could see the top of her blonde head there among all the red petals, with the occasional murmur of "It's not even December yet" to guide the way.

Covent Garden is open!

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So it looked like Sabine actually had to find out about this holiday thing, and going online had just led her down a Wiki hole, so, time to go to someone who would know.

...if she was here.

"Hello?"

"I'm here!" Astrid called out, marking her book and...setting it down on her chair as she sat up since there was no space on the counter with all the flowers. But standing up did allow her head to pop out over them, as she looked toward the door.

"OH, hey, Sabine, hold on."

She should at least move from behind the counter, at least get rid of one wall of poinsettias.

"Okay. Um, you're not in the market for poinsettias today, are you?"

"No. They're pretty, though," she said, genuinely appreciative of them. "I need an Earth thing explained and was hoping you could help."

"Sure," Astrid nodded. "If there's anything I'm good at, I'd hope it would be explaining Earth stuff."

But there was normal Earth stuff, and then there was...Fandom Earth stuff. Like why there were so many poinsettias and what exactly happened to them when they all, presumably, disappeared tomorrow.

"Okay," she said. "There are holidays coming up. ...Why?"

Astrid blinked for a moment, and then she sort of had to laugh.

"Why?" she asked, then shrugged a shoulder. "Religion and consumerism, mostly. The two big ones coming up are Christmas and Hanukkah. The first one's a Christian holiday, celebrating the birth of their figurehead, Jesus Christ, on a date that just so happens to conveniently align with the pagan winter solstice festivities in a way to capitalize on their traditions which has now been overblown into a gift-driven and mostly secular extravaganza. And the second one is a Jewish celebration also known as the Festival of Lights that commemorates when the Jewish people defended their way of life from invading Greek armies, and has basically taken a backseat to the other one because giving people presents and holy babies are more marketable than lighting candles and war."

Yeah, going to Astrid about Earth related things was always guaranteed to give you a...unique answer, at the very least.

"All right," Sabine said slowly. "I've had a class that was about shopping for this. It was not like anything you just said."

It was probably worse, because it was a Deadpool class.

"One of your classes was about shopping for this?"

This school. Astrid shook her head a little.

"I mean, shopping is a big part of it, definitely. Big sales right after Thanksgiving," and she, innocent time traveler that she was, was from a time a bit before they'd reached the level they were today, "all the stores are just filled with toys and things like that, because the biggest thing about Christmas anymore is that everyone gets presents. There's a lot of...celebration, too. Decoration, special Christmas songs, traditional drinks and foods, all sorts of pagentry. We...never really celebrated any of it in my family,"--understatement of the century; Ingrid hated Christmas more than any other American red-letter day"--most of what I know about it is from school and just, you know, seeing it everywhere."

Christ was a four-letter word in the Magnussen household. Astrid had to bum a ride off of another kid if she even wanted to go to the school Christmas pageant. And forget about the one year when she'd actually been chosen to sing in one. One year, she'd brought home a paper angel from class and Ingrid threw it straight into the trash.

But she always kind of wondered, what it was like, for kids with normal Christmases.

And she highly doubted that she'd be getting much of one here.

"There was talk of punching soccer moms." Whatever those were.

"So why I'm asking," she said, "is I seem to have gotten roped into throwing a party with Nina, and neither of us really knows what all of this is. Or where this Santa thing fits in."

So, Astrid was probably not getting a normal Christmas here, but she might get an insane and awesome one.

And still miles above getting your paper angels tossed into the garbage.

Astrid...wanted to ask about the soccer mom thing but also...very much didn't want to ask about the soccer mom thing.

"So I guess you guys need a Christmas consultant," and wound up with the girl who didn't celebrate Christmas, though she always kind of wanted to, so maybe this could actually be her chance to do all those dumb Christmas things that her mother always snarled at.

She would just...make sure not to actually mention any of it to Ingrid. She couldn't be disappointed in Astrid if she just never knew right?

"Well, Santa is...based on a person called St. Nicholas, I think. St. Nicholas went around and left gifts for the poor. Again, gifts, it's a theme. The whole...mythology of Santa Claus kind of blew up from there, and now he's this story that parents tell their kids, about a jolly fat man who lives in the North Pole and spends most of the year working with elves to make toys for all the kids. And then, on Christmas Eve, he flies around the whole world in a magic sleigh pulled by flying reindeer to leave them overnight for the kids to find in the morning. They wake up and find all these presents left by," she made finger quotes, "'Santa Claus' and it's just really kind of special and exciting."

And she wasn't always jealous of that sort of thing or anything, no.

"You know," she said, after a moment, "when you lay it all out there, it all sounds really crazy, doesn't it?"

Sabine blinked.

"Little bit," she said. "Flying reindeer? Like the teal ones in the woods?"

Let's start there.

"No," said Astrid, slowly. "Not quite. Reindeer are little different, they're bigger, have antlers, and are brown. Regular deer are also usually brown; I'm pretty sure the teal ones are a subspecies specific to this island. Reindeer are usually found in colder, more northern climates, I think. I'm not an expert or anything. In the Santa Claus story, they can fly because they're magic, but they don't actually fly in real life."

She paused, just slightly.

"In my real life, anyway. For all I know, there's someone here from a place where they actually do fly, but I wouldn't know anything about it."

"Okay," she said, filing that away. "So magic doesn't exist in this world except for Fandom, and Santa-related things?"

"Well, Santa's just a story," Astrid said. shifting a little with discomfort, because she wasn't sure she'd ever quite get used to the fact that these were actual conversations and things she considered in her daily life now. "It's not real. At least, not on my Earth. And I'm pretty sure that Fandom is not technically a part of my Earth, anyway."

Sabine paused, briefly, and said, "I'm going to put Santa on the side for now, because it's going to lead to so many questions. What are these traditions you mentioned?"

"I was just going to suggest that myself, yeah," Astrid agreed, definitely feeling like they could wind up down quite the rabbit hole with that one. "But, let's see...some other traditions. Now, remember, I've never really celebrated Christmas, so these are coming kind of second hand. But thee's...caroling? That's when people go around door to door, singing Christmas songs. And there's a Christmas tree, that's a big one, people put up evergreens and decorate them with lights and tinsel and ornaments." She had to grin a little at that one, trying to imagine what would result in Sabine being left alone to deck out a Christmas tree. "Some people hang stockings, they make eggnog and mulled cider, gingerbread houses. We always did pageants at my old schools, too, where kids acted out holiday stories for their parents. Oh! And there's this thing called mistletoe, there's a whole tradition wrapped around that, it's a plant that people put up and if you get caught underneath it with another person, you're supposed to kiss each other.

"Which is interesting," she felt the need to add, "because I think mistletoe is poisonous. Not deadly," unless you were a Norse god, "but still harmful."

There were some ideas that were definitely starting to form with this.

"That sounds like a very Earth thing," Sabine decided, blissfully unaware that Fandom's mistletoe yelled at you. "But all right, people would probably be for a tree... Might get cold decorating one in the winter, but if that's what you do..."

"Well, you also bring it," Astrid gestured vaguely with a hand, "inside. A lot of people will decorate their houses and trees outside, too, but the big tradition is to find a tree and cut it down and bring it inside to decorate. And underneath it is where all the presents go on Christmas morning.

"If they don't do anything like it already," she mused, "it seems like it'd be easy enough to get a Christmas tree in each common room, or a big one in the lobby. You could easily turn a tree decorating into a party. We can all make our own ornaments and things like that."

She actually really liked that idea, and she had a feeling Ssabine would, too, without much convincing.

"That'd probably go over really well. And have the... other stuff there, too. There's a lot to this, it sounds like."

Which was a challenge, not a deterrent.

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Covent Garden Flowers; Tuesday [11/27].

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