No Hearth's Warming Allowed
“I did it! I really did! I can’t believe I did it!” I shouted, drunk with the emotion that gave me to contemplate the my living room. Christmas´s happy lights decorated all the walls, sparkling to the rhythm of the fire in the fireplace. Red and green streamers ran through all my furniture. A mistletoe hung over the door, waiting for two unwary to stand under it. I even had four red socks; one for me, one for the wife that doesn’t exist and two for the children I’ll never have, all overflowed with candies that I stole from Pinkie Pie.
And there, next to my sofa, was my masterpiece: The Christmas Tree. A giant pine exported from Yakyakistan. Decorated with the red and gold balls that Pinkie Pie and that pegasus mailmare had not swallowed thinking they were candy.
For the first time I came to this world of talking horses, I felt at home. I was calm, staring at my countless reflections in the shiny balls. I already had the nougat and candy canes, so I only needed a nice bottle of booze. But I have to finish my very last project before buying some: the birth of Christ made with peanuts. If I just had some carols playing, this would have been perfect.
Nobody will stop me from having my Christmas. My Christmas… without family… without friends… alone…
Change of plans, I will spend all my pay in alcohol, I will get drunk, I will put on sexy clothes and I will spend the best night of my life with that tree.
I went to my room and put on the Santa costume I nicely forced Rarity to make me. It was so well made that the beard was made with pony fur, and even she made a huge belly with a cloud and some cotton.
Wearing the Christmas armor, the cold meant nothing to me. I left my home and walked down the icy streets of Ponyville as the ponies walked together, giving each other gifts and cuddling, thing I used to find utterly cute, but not this time. They have destroyed all of my holidays parties and they now want to kill Christmas. They are my enemies now. As cute as it is to see how the muzzles of Lyra and Bon Bon scrunch as they muzzle rub… D’awww…
“Focus!” I shouted.
“I knew it!”
“Eep!” I shouted in the most macho way possible after an assault by Twilight Sparkle.
“I knew it from the first time I saw you. Your skin, the density of your hair, the dark circles below your eyes, the constant need for shelter and how fat you are now. I knew humans need to hibernate!” Twilight patted herself on the shoulder. “Quite a deduction there, princess.”
“For the last time, Twilight, I’m not a land dolphin. Stop analyzing me.”
The princess’s wings opened. “I’m not analyzing you, I’m about to give you a lesson in friendship so you can learn to appreciate the magic of Hearth’s Warming.” At the precise moment she was going to take a breath to start sermonizing me, I shoved a snowball in her mouth. She’d used the combination of words that triggers all my defenses and not even a princess was going to escape my anger.
“It’s not Hearth’s Warming! It’s Christmas! "
Twilight spit the ball. “Christmas, what’s that?”
My eye twitched when I realized the crass mistake I’d made. I awakened the second most annoying power in all of Equestria, just behind Pinkie Pie’s Pinkie Pieness: Twilight Sparkle’s curiosity. I sighed as I resumed my way to the town. Of course Twilight started to follow me. In her eyes I could see written “oh fat, red human, tell me your secrets”.
“Christmas is a holiday of my world. Possibly the most famous.”
“And as usual, not all humans celebrate it, right?” Twilight said with a knowing smile. Instead of answer, I just grunted, I knew the next thing she was going to say. “You humans are so weird. Why don’t you all celebrate the same thing as we ponies do?”
“How many times I’m going to tell you that we live in different continents with different languages and religions. Humans dominate the world and everyone does what they want with their part and celebrates what they want.”
“If there are so many, how do you manage the weather? Do you use lists and schedules?”
Enough. I wasn’t going to let princess let’s-talk-about-the-things-that-you-loved-and-never-will-recover ruin my Christmas. I pressed my Santa hat against my ears and hurried up, ignoring Twilight.
With one last turn, I could see Berry Punch pub’s. Applejack came out the pub carrying an empty wagon. Like Twilight, she was wearing only a hat and a scarf.
“Howdy, you two. Ready for the big night? Whoa nelly! Someone has been eating some extra apples, eh, pardner?” said the cheerful cowgirl lightly pushing the fake belly.
I grunted as I passed by her side without making eye contact. That’s not something Santa would do, but Santa doesn’t deal with ponies so everything was fine. I sat at the bar and asked Berry for a couple of bottles.
“Forgive him, Applejack,” said Twilight, “he’s upset because we’re going to celebrate Hearth’s Warming instead of one of his holidays.”
“Oh, shuck.” Applejack let go of her wagon and came to my side to hug me. “Don’t feel lonesome, mate. Ya know that we’ll let you celebrate Hearth’s Warming with us.”
“I don’t want to celebrate Hearth’s Warming,” I said as I pushed Applejack away from me. “I want to celebrate the birth of God, sing carols and cuddle with my loved ones in front of the fireplace as we drink some hot cocoa.”
Twilight looked at me. “You just described Hearth’s Warming right now, only that we celebrate the birth of our kingdom.”
Berry put the nine bottles I bought on the bar. Her eyes jumped between me and the bottles. “Are you sure you don’t need any help with those… to take them home, I mean.”
“I’m fine.” I stood up. “If someone wants free alcohol, you know where to find me.”
The pub door opened and Rainbow rolled inside. “Someone said free alcohol!?”
“Only for those who celebrate Christmas!”
Rainbow scratched her head. “Free booze or my friends… Free booze… Friends… Nope, sorry, bro, but I’m sticking with my pals.”
“Yeah,” said Applejack. “We’re going to have a big party at Twilight’s castle. Come with us and forget about that Christmas thing.”
“Enough!” I roared with clenched fists. “I don’t want to celebrate Hearth’s Warming. I don’t want to sing carols to six enlightened ponies who created a kingdom. I want my Christmas, my nougats and my God. A true god that makes real miracles.”
I couldn’t prevent a smug forming on my face. “You ponies have brains as big as the balls of my tree. You really think moving the sun, the moon and the stars is a miracle? That’s child’s play. You know what my god does? He turns the water into motherfucking wine! Boom! Drop that mic! Walk out giving middle fingers. That’s it! There’s nothing more beyond that!”
“Hmm…” Twilight called my attention, but didn’t dare to make visual contact with me. “That’s a simple transfiguration spell and… even foals can do it.”
I swear that if I wasn’t feeling blissful because of the magic of Christmas, I would impale the alicorn on my tree and use her Cutie Mark as the Christmas Star. But no, I was cool, I was cool. I groomed my hair and left the pub like a gentleman making sure that I close the door, but I slammed it so hard that neon fell off.
All the ponies watched with curious eyes my new belly and the nine bottles I carried with me, but then they remembered that they were celebrating and continued doing cute pony stuff. I couldn’t care the slig— Crap! Lyra and Bon Bon sitting on a bench in pre-cuddling position. I ran away from them before they could break my heart in six pieces.
I didn’t stop running until I got home. I locked the door and put the alcohol next to the nougat and the cocoa. Everything was ready for a great time of peanut art and contemplation of the white snow. And the best part is that the ponies are so busy celebrating that they won’t come to bother me.
“Greetings, my little human.”
The calm voice of the intruder made me scream like a schoolfilly with a mat of chest hair. And, again, I was face to face with an alicorn princess. There she was, Celestia, goddess of the ponies, sitting on my couch with a smile as warm as the sun on her flank.
“You’ve decorated the house for Hearth’s Warming, that’s nice. But I think you have some details wrong.”
I jumped on my feet in the moment I saw her gigantic horn light up. “No, wait! Don’t change anything! This decoration is not for Hearth’s Warming, it’s for Christmas.”
“Christmas?” asked Celestia with one eyebrow raised. I could feel a touch of dryness in her angelic voice. “I assume that lesbian old man costume you’re wearing also has to do with Christmas, right?” Her voice became colder than the frost in my window.
I nodded, slowly; never expecting she would talk so coldly with me.
She sighed and pointed her hoof at the couch beside her. “Take a seat please. We need to talk.”
She used the forbidden words! My blood was cooler than the mountains of snow that covered the roads. My legs walked as if they had a life of their own towards the couch. Her horn lit up and, with a flash, the two sofas were facing each other.
All the lights went out. The sun had faded so much that it was no longer able to illuminate my house. With a glow from her horn, the fireplace ignited. In front of me rose a mass of darkness of which I could only distinguish the brightness in the gems of her royal attire, which for some reason had more life than her magenta eyes.
I could feel a cold chill creeping down my back. It was those eyes of her… Mine had fallen prey to them like a butterfly in a web at the mercy of the spider’s mockery.
“I open you the doors of my world. I let you live among mine, and what do you do? You open my fridge and you devour every single cupcake.”
“I-I would never touch your fridge, Your Higness.”
“And then why do you talk about Jesus of Nazareth, Buddha, Chuck Norris, Cthulhu, Google and so many more fake gods.”
Those words wrapped around my heart like chains of blazing iron.
“You know them! You know about my world!”
“I know everything. Everything that happens is because I allow it to do so. Each flower that blooms, each day that passes, each villain that I let act so I could send Twilight to defeat them to keep the ponies acclaiming me. Look out the window and tell me what you see.”
I was not sure why, but I did what she asked me. “I only see snow… and ponies.”
“Exactly: ponies. My little ponies! Their only purpose in this life is to adore me and I will not let you ruin it with false promises.”
The fire in the fireplace grew to the ceiling. All the socks and Christmas decorations fell prey to the flames. I felt so impotent, trapped under the gaze of the one and only true goddess. The only thing I could do was to watch how everything burned, my house, my tree, my Christmas.
When the flames died out, Celestia got up from the sofa. “I will leave it in a warning today. I hope you have learned the lesson.” She walked calmly to the door, where she stopped to see me. “And remember, my little human, sol omnia temperat.”
I heard the sound of the door closing and I was finally able to let out the air that was trapped in my lungs. I still felt my heart being squeezed by the cold armor of her hooves. My head slowly sank into my hands. I refused to look into what my house had become. I couldn’t look at it and accept that everything I once had now was nothing but ashes.
“Silent night… Holy night…” A tear slid down my cheeks as I sang the only Christmas carol that Octavia had managed to transcribe. But they were nothing but empty letters.
A set of knocks on the door took me out of my song. Surely, it was a pony to tell me how much fun they were having. With my eyes glued to the floor, I stood up and opened the door. On the other side was Berry Punch dressed in a green coat and hat, and wearing a smile worthy of the lottery.
“What do you want, Berry?”
“Celebrate Christmas, of course.”
“What!?”
“This afternoon you opened my eyes. All my life I have been following the wrong alicorn. I want to celebrate with you the birth of the wine dude.” She showed me a basket with fourteen bottles of wine. “Look how many I brought!”
For a moment, I couldn’t believe what I saw. I felt Christmas tingling in my chest again. I could even hear the joy of the bells. I grabbed the purple mare and threw her inside the house. In an overdose of emotion, I squeezed her so hard in my arms that I made her sound like a squeeze toy.
Dragging a pile of ashes with each step I took, I grabbed my corkscrew and opened two bottles, one for each. No cups, we gonna celebrate Berry’s style.
The evening began with a competition to see who could empty a bottle faster – of course I lost. Now was time for some Christmas activities, but everything I had now was nothing but dust… So we drank another bottle. We had nothing to do but tell bad jokes and drink, but, oddly enough, I felt happy. Nothing mattered more than doing everything possible to make Berry laugh.
A basket full of bottles of wine, a purple mare by my side and a burnt house. That was my Christmas. And it was perfect.
I lost count of how many bottles we drank, and the fact that I was seeing double wasn’t helping. My foot slipped and I fell on the sofa so hard that it coughed the bed. I took a lazy turn and curled up between the sheets, fleeing from the cold.
“Hey give me some,” said Berry as he climbed onto the bed. She got under the sheets and crawled little by little until she got into my Santa costume. Her mane wagged against my belly making me laugh. Her purple head appeared in front of mine out of nowhere. “Hi,” she said before we laughed like to idiots watching a stone.
I squeezed the pony hard against my chest. The heat that came off her coat was worth more than everything I had. I close my eyes and rest my face against her muzzle. Everything felt so good, so warm. There was nothing better that hugging one of these ponies in a cold, winter night. Lulled by the rise and fall of her chest, I knew that I was going to fall asleep soon.
“Berry Punch.” The mare opened her eyes to see me. “Merry Christmas.”
A smile decorated Berry’s face. “Happy Hear— I mean, happy that Christmas thing.”
We both fell asleep at the same time that the the first snowflake fell from the sky.
Author's Note
Hey guys! I hope you are all happy for the new year and for all the wonders it will give us! And if you don't want to say good bye to 2018 yet, there is another Hearth's Warming story for you.
Happy New Year everypony!
