Kevin’s Twenty-fifth Christmas

Kevin got in the car to come back home after celebrating the Fake Christmas, a feast invented as an excuse so her best friend, Kate, wouldn’t be so lonely at this time of the year. Kate’s words were now an echo that his brain couldn’t stop reproducing over and over again:

“Because I want to do it and because I can do it. To celebrate the holidays means that ‘we are sitting all together  around a tree?’ No, it doesn’t mean that. To celebrate the holidays means that we have a nice time the way we can, and I can this way.”

Was Kate right? Probably. She was one of those people that tend to be right even more times than one would expect. But, anyway, Kevin would never understand those who choose to spend Christmas alone. No matter how many times he repeated that Christianism was responsible for almost every human misery, he would always celebrate its most important holiday. No one cared about Jesus’ birth anymore. Had someone cared about it ever? What was important was something different. What was important was his mom’s hug in the living room when she came back from the trip on which Kevin had been forgotten, or Buzz’s funny insult, or Uncle Frank’s complaints about having left his glasses at home. What was important was love, nothing else.

The next afternoon, Kevin started preparing everything for dinner. This wasn’t the first time his family was coming over to his place, but he wanted everything to be as chaotic and perfect as they were.

However, the truth is that no one rang the bell that night. And everyone may think that this was Kevin’s worst Christmas, but it wasn’t. Because the table was set for seventeen people and Kevin ate pheasant while imagining the most hilarious Christmas conversations. Maybe the fireworks had already been set off in Paris, or maybe that show hadn’t started yet, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because dinner was served. And his family wasn’t there. They hadn’t forgotten him this time, or perhaps they had. Maybe they had decided to forget him forever. But dinner was served. In the end, the only thing we need to put up with loneliness is to know how to tell ourselves a good story.

Written by Manuel Botana
Translated by Mariel Kozynski