All right. So begins the cultural exchange arc. I'll be taking a few excerpts from the week before, touching on various things about poleepkwan culture and how they'd relate to human culture. I might post stories, I might not. Either way, the conversations resulting from this will be... interesting, to say the least.

Let's get on with it, shall we?

Of Christmas

The week before Christmas could not have come any later than it did. During that time, though, I kept myself pretty busy trying to surf around the internet, read up on things that they could understand about my holiday. I knew what I would have to say to get them to understand my religion first, and then I would tell them how we viewed our holiday.

I had also requested for leave the week of Christmas, and that was being arranged as many others were attempting to do the same thing. I figured I'd spend the holiday with Tania for maybe a day before heading back home to Glasgow for the holiday to be with my parents for a week. I imagined they were getting all lonely with myself in Johannesburg and Andrew in Paris, and so I asked Piet to make some travel arrangements. He seemed a little dismayed at this as he hoped I would be staying in Johannesburg with Tania, but he booked a flight so I would be in Scotland on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Since Christmas fell on a Saturday that year, though, I would have to leave the very next day, which was unfortunate for me seeing as how I would barely get to see them. But I supposed being able to see them was better than nothing, as my time with the ones in the tent attested to.

And so, I prepared to take part in the cultural exchange, in which I would get started pretty soon after the last time I had gone in.

They had not called me into the district during the day, and I naturally assumed this would hold for quite some time, waiting for the week before Christmas to call me into the district.

Of course, I brought the laptop along the first night of our exchange. Of course, I probably would not need it. And that would hold true when I entered the tent that night, as I never took it out of the armor to use it.

Instead, when all eyes in the tent went to me, I knew they wanted to know about the holiday we were celebrating. I sat down softly, and then I slapped my hands against my knees. Everyone was in that tent that night, all of their attentions on me.

"So," I said. "Tonight's the first night of our exchange. What shall I talk about?"

"Well..." began Edward. "Since we told you about our holiday, we figured we would ask about yours."

I nodded. "Fair enough," I said. "Although, to be honest, December is full of them for various people."

Caroline raised an eyebrow ridge, an arm laying across her lap. "Really?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "For now, I'll talk about my own holiday, since I celebrate it."

"And that would be this 'Christmas' that I overhear you talking about," said Mark.

"Yep," I said, crossing my arms. "Christmas... actually takes two days. Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day is what we refer to them as."

"Ah?" asked Caroline. "Why two days?"

I opened my mouth to reply when I paused, realizing she had a point. I still could not remember why Christmas took place over the course of two days instead of one. But thinking of this, I simply shrugged.

"I am honestly not sure," I said. "But... it is a holiday that many, many people take seriously, if only because of religious reasons."

Jamecyn rose her eye ridge. "I didn't know you guys had religion," she said.

I rolled my eyes as I thought of all the complications religion had brought to our planet. "Lots of them, too," I said. "There are so many religions around here I'm afraid we've fought one war too many over all of them."

"Really?" asked Harold. "You mean, that there's no standardized religion here?"

"I'm afraid not," I said. "It would be nice if we did, though. I'm telling you, the extremes some people are willing to go on this planet... I'll have to tell you some other time, though, as we're going off topic."

"Of course," said Caroline, blue carapace shifting slightly. "So, why's it so big for your religion?"

Glancing around, I gestured. "Well, in my religion, it's believed that a man was born that was the son of our God. His name was Jesus Christ. He came down and preached out a message of acceptance to all. There's a whole cultural aspect to it that would take forever to explain, but he was hung on a cross by the empire and thus died to save our sins..."

At this, all the antennae in the tent went up. "Wait, he died for your sins?" asked Jamecyn.

"I'm not sure I understand that..." admitted Harold. "How does dying for your sins mean that the entire world is absolved of them? I mean... you're still sinning."

"That's true..." I said. "But, he gave us a chance to be redeemed, and for a shot at paradise in the afterlife," I said. "Our God loves us all, apparently, although I'm not sure why he doesn't just intervene now."

Caroline shrugged. "Gods tend to do that a lot, apparently," she pointed out.

Blinking, I rose my eyebrow. "You know, I never thought of it like that," I said. "Almost all mythologies arise out of a spiritual side of humanity that we all need to celebrate... and all of them have had something to teach us... but the gods never go in on us like that..."

"Yeah," said Jamecyn as she hugged her knees close to her body. "Boreal and Sorgeval certainly don't intervene as much as they could right now."

"Maybe they just don't care?" postulated Harold, raising a finger in the air as he did.

"I... honestly can't answer that question," I said. "But anyways, he died for our sins, and so he's become a huge figure in our church."

"So Christmas is the day he died?" asked Mark.

Blinking, I looked to the parent poleepkwa. "No," I said. "Christmas is the day of his birth."

"Oh," said David. "Well, how do you celebrate the birth of someone who died... how many cycles ago?"

I was not sure how to calculate this lunar cycle into our years, or even if there was a calculation. So I replied, "Two thousand human years," I said.

"One thousand lunar cycles, then," said Edward. "Does anybody know where he was born?"

"He was born in a manger," I said, shrugging. "But I'm pretty sure that by now it no longer exists."

"Then... then how do you celebrate birth when you can't even leave gifts at his birthplace?" asked Caroline.

I shrugged. "We celebrate a special kind of mass," I said. "Where we get together for an hour and pray. It's... pretty much what the devoted people do. Some others give a bunch of gifts to their children..."

"So we get lucky on Christmas?" asked Matthew innocently.

I shrugged, closing my eyes briefly. "Yes," I replied. "You get exceedingly lucky, I should think. Although..." I glanced briefly at the entrance of the tent, and the group understood my meaning.

"Yeah, it sucks that it's in this dump," said Jamecyn. "But come that day, we can probably work something out."

"What I don't get, though, is how the gift giving transfers to your own children," pointed out Mark.

"Honestly, I'm not sure how either," I admitted. "It's just the way things have been for as long as I can remember. But I look at it this way: I like to think it's celebrating life in its own strange little way. The birth of Christ is celebrated, so I like to think that we channel that through our own children."

"That's quite a bit of wishful thinking there," said Harold with a shrug.

"It probably is," was my reply, and I looked over to the poleepkwa. "But still, wishful thinking is good."

Caroline nodded at this, shifting slightly. "And what about the adults?" she asked. "What do they do?"

"They either host gatherings where their whole family gets together, get the gifts for the children, or hold the prayers," I replied with a shrug. "It depends honestly. I personally don't have any children at all, so I just go and make prayers..."

"So it is also about being with loved ones," pointed out Edward.

"Yes," I replied.

The blueish poleepkwa looked out to its tentmates. "All of a sudden, I fail to see the religious significance of this holiday," he said. "Now to me, it sounds like celebrating just being alive. Our concept of the spirit may be vastly different from yours, but... wouldn't that sort of mindset have... tainted the holiday?"

I rose an eyebrow at this, crossing my arms as I kept up a partly confused glance. "Really?" I asked. "Tainted? Why do you say that?"

"We celebrate our own holiday in celebration of a grand event that has always been so," said Caroline. "And we celebrate with dancing, singing... more things to connect to our spiritual side."

Rubbing my chin, I glanced around at the tent. "But you're celebrating a tangible event that most of you don't even know all that much about because it happened on your home world," I pointed out. "So, barring the whole 'biological clock' thing for a second, how would you celebrate the spirit with something that occurred in the real world?"

The others were silent after this question, looking to each other. Glancing around, Edward finally provided a consensus by shrugging.

"You got us there," intoned Harold playfully, rubbing a hand along his brown carapace as he spoke. "And here I was figuring there would be more differences between our holiday and yours."

"Well, when we factor in the biological clock, there are," I replied. "For example, the birth of our savior, so to speak, probably did not occur on Decmeber 25th. Not a lot of us are sure, because we don't have that kind of sense of... timing that you do. It's... a bit hard to explain."

Jamecyn gave me a raised eye ridge in response. "Really?" she asked. "That's not what your choice of words have been saying."

I shot a curious glance at the green poleepkwa before shrugging. "I don't know," I replied. "We're all completely individual, in that we can't boss other people around unless we give a name to ourselves and try to put it there. It's not biologically built into our bodies like it is with you. We... don't have that kind of sense of connection with each other. And I'm sure it works the same way with how you view time."

"I see..." said Caroline with a nod. Mark's mouthparts clicked together. "But still, I think it would be a lot to take a week off just to celebrate two days."

I shook my head, chuckling softly. "It's not just those two days," I said. "There are two other religious holidays that various people celebrate in this month. It's insane how many holidays there are in December."

At this, everybody in the tent rose an eye ridge. "So it's not just that one you were just telling us about," replied David.

I shook my head. "If we include your week of peace, then that would be four holidays that we celebrate over the course of more than a single day," I stated. "As for the other two we celebrate... they would be called 'Hannukah' and 'Kwanzaa'."

Without skipping a beat, I began to talk about how those two holidays worked, and our conversation continued quite peacefully.

When I returned to my post that night, Marius looked at me, noticing my smile.

"How'd the first night go?" he asked.

"Went pretty well," I said perkily. "We really only talked about my holiday. No story that could relate to it, unfortunately, but I expected that if I want to be perfectly honest with myself."

Marius nodded, looking at me. "You celebrate Christmas, right?"

"Yes," I said, crossing my arms in front of me. "But I'll be in Glasgow for two days, so I can't help you there I'm afraid. Apologies."

"No, no, it's fine," replied Marius. "I was just curious is all."

"And yourself?" I asked. "I assume it's Christmas as well?"

He smiled. "You're quite sharp," he told me.

Smiling. "I don't know, but I'm feeling quite good about myself," I said. "I can't wait to see how they view everything about music and dance."

"I'd imagine it's a big part of them," said Marius with a shrug. "It's probably like how we... used... to treat music..."

"We'll have to see," I said. "But for now, I'm looking forward to not being disappointed."

Marius glanced at me before we returned to our positions, the sun beginning to rise ever so slowly in the horizon as we continued to speak and watch over the district.