Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar or the song "We Need a Little Christmas" from Mame, music and lyrics by Jerry Herman.

Author's Note: People have been wanting me to do Christmas songs for the season, so here's one. This story takes place immediately after The Avatar and the Firelord. Merry Christmas, everyone! (Or whatever you might celebrate at this time of year.)

Mame

Haul out the holly,
Put up the tree before my
Spirit falls again.
Fill up the stocking,
I might be rushing things, but
Deck the halls again now.

As the four of them stood holding hands in the orange glow of the sun, Katara was struck with an absolutely brilliant idea. At least, she thought it was brilliant.

"Sokka!" she exclaimed, releasing his hand. "Let's have a Solstice Festival!"

"What? Why? What have we got to celebrate?" replied her brother in his usual wet-blanket manner.

"What did we have to celebrate back home?" she returned. "I just wish I'd thought of it earlier, while Aang was still talking with Roku. We'd have had time to prepare."

"Solstice Festival?" Aang broke in, and Katara smiled at him. She was sure he would appreciate this.

"Here, it's the summer solstice, but at the South Pole, everything's backwards, so it's our winter solstice," Katara explained.

For we need a little Christmas,
Right this very minute,
Candles in the window,
Carols at the spinnet.

"I know that," Aang told her. "The Southern Air Temple is far enough south for us to have the same pattern."

"Right, well, back home, we would celebrate our winter solstice by lighting fires with anything we could find. We would gather and dry seaweed for days. When the day came, we'd also play drums, sing songs, dance, and tell stories."

"Sounds fun," he grinned back at her. "Where do we start?"

"Wait just a minute," Toph interrupted. "Can someone explain this whole solstice thing to me? You people go around talking about things like solstices and equinoxes, but I'm not really sure what they are."

Yes, we need a little Christmas,
Right this very minute.
It hasn't snowed a single flurry,
But Santa, dear, we're in a hurry.

"Oh, um…" Katara hesitated, not sure how to make it comprehensible to a blind person. Aang made an effort.

"Toph, you might have noticed that the days aren't always the same length," he began. "Sometimes night comes sooner, other times later."

"Yeah," Toph agreed, after thinking about it for a moment. "In the summer, it seems to be warm longer, and my parents used to let me go outside to play after dinner."

"Exactly," Sokka took up the thread. "The sun sort of shifts throughout the year. The summer solstice is the longest day of the year with the shortest night, and the winter solstice is the shortest day with the longest night. Of course, at the South Pole, it's a little more extreme."

So come down the chimney,
Put up the brightest string of
Lights I've ever seen.
Slice up the fruitcake;
It's time we hung some tinsel
On that evergreen bough.

"It wouldn't make much difference to you, Toph, but it's completely dark for months at the South Pole," Katara put in. "That's our winter. Then it's light for months in the summer. We celebrate the winter solstice because it's the deepest part of our winter. Even though it's dark, we know that we'll see the sun soon. We light fires to remind us of that."

"What a great tradition!" Aang remarked excitedly. "We should have done it for the winter solstice."

"Well, we were a little busy trying to get to the Crescent Island at the time," Sokka reminded him. "So you could talk to Avatar Roku. Remember?"

"Oh yeah. Right." Aang looked a little abashed.

For I've grown a little leaner,
Grown a little colder
Grown a little sadder,
Grown a little older.

"Sokka, why don't you and Toph see what kind of wood you can find around here?" Katara began assigning jobs. Even though a volcanic eruption had devastated the island, that had happened more than one hundred years ago, and the fact that Roku had once lived here indicated that it must be capable of supporting life.

"Do you really think it's a good idea to build a big fire on a deserted island?" Sokka objected. "We could attract unwanted attention."

"We're in the middle of the Fire Nation, Sokka," Toph pointed out in an overly patient tone. "I doubt anyone would think it was strange to see a fire."

"Whatever," Sokka mumbled, and the pair of them climbed the rocks to pursue their errand.

And I need a little angel,
Sitting on my shoulder,
Need a little Christmas now.

"What about me?" Aang asked.

"First of all, I was hoping that we could use Appa's saddle as a drum," Katara said. "It just wouldn't feel like the solstice without at least one drum." Since they'd been here all day, the saddle had been removed and set on the ground, and Katara gave it an experimental strike. It made a muffled sort of noise, and Katara wrinkled her nose. "Help me find a position where it will make the right sound."

It took a lot of trial and error several types of bending, but they finally had the saddle propped on a series of rocks in such a way that it produced a resounding thunk, even changing tone somewhat depending upon where Katara struck it and with what.

But we need a little Christmas,
Right this very minute,
Candles in the window,
Carols at the spinnet.

Katara declared herself satisfied after she'd sampled out a few rhythms on the improvised drum while Aang played an impromptu melody on his flute.

"The next thing is the dancing," she announced. "Since you proved that you were pretty good at the dance party you hosted, I thought you could help me with one of the dances." She was trying valiantly not to blush as she remembered the last time they'd danced together, but she wasn't sure if she was succeeding.

"I'll do my best," Aang promised, and Katara proceeded to teach him the traditional Dance of the Sun and Moon. True to her expectations, he was a quick study.

Yes, we need a little Christmas,
Right this very minute.
It hasn't snowed a single flurry,
But Santa, dear, we're in a hurry.

This was not a couples' dance, strictly speaking. Since the sun and moon were only intermittently seen in the sky at the same time, it mostly consisted of the pair circling around each other. Katara was playing the sun, so after the cycles of autumn, she hid to represent the long winter. The sun returned shyly to her circuit in the spring and finally moved with joyful abandon to fill the sky when the summer arrived. She was so lost in the dance that she didn't notice that Sokka and Toph had come back until she heard her brother's voice as she finished.

"So when's the wedding?" he asked teasingly. Katara broke her pose abruptly and felt herself reddening again. Fortunately, the sun was setting by this time, so she doubted that her blush was obvious in the low light.

So come down the chimney,
Put up the brightest string of
Lights I've ever seen.
Slice up the fruitcake;
It's time we hung some tinsel
On that evergreen bough.

Sokka looked back and forth between Aang and Katara, his grin only broadening.

"You didn't tell him the rest of the tradition?" he asked his sister. She looked down, not answering. Taking that as a no, Sokka turned back to Aang and told him gleefully, "The couple who does the Dance of the Sun and Moon at the Solstice Festival is expected to get married when the sun returns in the spring." Katara risked a glance at Aang and saw that he was looking away awkwardly, possibly blushing just as she was, but she didn't give him a chance to say anything.

"Well, I couldn't very well dance with you or Toph, could I?" she retorted. "It's supposed to be an unmarried male not in the family. Besides, I need you to keep the beat when we do it for real."

For we need a little music,
Need a little laughter,
Need a little singing
Ringing from the rafters.

Sokka started a bonfire as the centerpiece of their festival. Katara distributed some of their food as their feast. It was sort of strange to be having the celebration on an expanse of black, volcanic rock instead of ice and snow, yet it also made her feel like she was completely at home in the middle of enemy territory.

After everyone was done eating, they told a few stories and had songs and some improvisational dancing. Appa even hummed along, and Momo did aerial acrobatics. When it was time for the final festival observance, Sokka went to the saddle and drummed out a steady beat with one hand, adding other parts of the saddle for different sounds with his other. Once she'd caught the beat, Toph added a counterpoint by banging nearby rocks against each other and the ground.

And we need a little snappy
"Happy ever after,"
We need a little Christmas now.
We need a little Christmas now.

Katara and Aang performed their dance. Thanks to Sokka's comments, it felt a little awkward at first, especially the steps that brought them close together. Still, Katara eventually loosened up, feeling as though she were becoming part of the rhythm of life: night and day, the seasons, the cycle of the stars as they rotated into different shapes around the sky.

She finished in a position facing Aang, and they were both smiling. Toph and Sokka applauded, and in the moment before they came to join in a group hug, Katara considered the possibility of marrying her dance partner in a few months. Although unlikely, the idea was not an unpleasant one.

On the whole, Katara thought this was the best Solstice Festival she'd ever attended.

--

Author's Note: Most people would assume that the woman would play the moon, but I noticed long ago that the genders of the sun and moon in the German language were reversed from the usual in Western culture – the sun is feminine and the moon masculine. That was really the only reason I decided to switch it up here.

Review responses:

Shinobi Bender: True enough. I've never been a huge fan of Jin, but she provided a perfect conduit for that last story.

imagine131: It is odd that I haven't used Andrew Lloyd Webber in this collection yet. My first Avatar songfic was Will You Remember?, using the lyrics to Think of Me.

nutshak: Thank you very much!

Katsumara: Well, I'm glad you're caught up now. This collection does allow me to explore a lot of ideas I might not otherwise think about.