A Christmas Story in Six Sentences

The word for the Six Sentence Story prompt this week is “exchange”, which may or may not lead to some holiday themed stories. I was trying to whittle this story anyway and found the constraints of six sentences exactly to be helpful in my attempts. Yep, only six sentences and use some form of “exchange”. The link opens Wednesday, when Denise of GirlieOntheEdge opens the gate. Six Sentences is fun and has been decriminalized in most states.

Christmas Village

The first year of “Christmas Village Weekend”, she was among a number of people that were actually paid to mingle and be merry, to walk around promulgating Christmas spirit, engaging people and exchanging holiday pleasantries. At the beginning of that weekend she thought she could tell who might be an actor like her and who was really there for the festivities, but the actors were sworn to secrecy about their role, even now in the second year when it was determined their services were no longer needed.

She went back to Christmas Village anyway, where she found there were even more vendors and entertainments lining the pedestrian only streets than the first year, even more bustling throngs of holiday revelers. She found herself searching the crowd for a man she had seen the year before, an older bearded man in red plaid who had seemed inexplicably jovial. Suspecting him of being a hired actor like her, she’d joked with him that she believed, but his laughter had seemed heartfelt and real, something she couldn’t forget.

He must have remembered her too because when she saw him he asked her if she still believed and she said yes; and she smiled, because there he was and if he was real, then maybe she was too.