"Watson? Care for some help coming down?" Sherlock Holmes was outside his door, leaning casually against the railing.
John Watson looked up from his desk where he'd been writing. "If you don't mind," he said sadly.
"Come now, there's no need for self-consciousness, not among friends and especially not in your own home. Here, give me your arm."
Watson did, grimacing in pain as Holmes helped him to his feet. "Sorry," he murmured, "It's just been such an unseasonably cold December…"
"I told you, Watson. No need for that. Besides, it wouldn't be a proper Christmas Eve if I didn't spend the evening in quiet conversation with Watson."
Watson paused at the top of the stairs to give him an incredulous look. "You spent last Christmas Eve lying in a gutter in the off-chance you could overhear a conversation which, may I remind you, you did not even need to hear in order to plot your next move."
"I am a thorough detective. If I were not I would not gain any clients nor deserve the faith they put in me."
"You're also a madman who lay in a gutter on Christmas Eve."
"Yes," Holmes murmured. "I am also that."
They'd been moving down the stairs as they spoke, and Holmes finally deposited Watson into his chair, careful as a seasoned nurse. The verbal distraction he'd baited Watson into had worked, and the self-consciousness, if not the pain, was gone from Watson's face. Watson knew that was what he was doing, of course, had been the one to teach him that making patients talk was the best way of putting them at ease in even the most uncomfortable of circumstances. It worked, though, and Watson let it work, happy to have anything else on his mind besides his aching limb and the self-inflicted shame of his flatmate needing to help him down the stairs.
"Do you know, Watson," Holmes said, moving to the window and peering out into the darkness, snow glittering under the lights of the streetlamps below, "I think Christmas may be my favorite time of the year."
"You may think so, but I know it is."
"For myself?"
"Of course. I'm your biographer. It is my business to know things about you that you don't know."
Holmes grinned, recognizing the play on some of his own words. "And how did you come to that conclusion?"
"Charity."
"Charity? But I don't understand. I don't volunteer my time at charities; my chosen profession is far too chaotic to allow me to set a volunteering schedule."
"I meant it in the general sense. You are, throughout the year, a charitable man: you do not discriminate between the cases of the rich or poor, you do not alter your fees to take advantage of the desperate and indeed will remit them entirely if need be, and you are kind, if not overly compassionate to your fellow man. This, I do and always have admired about you. At Christmastime, however, you are more charitable to all. and go around with a smile on your face. You wish season's greetings on strangers, and even now as you look out the window it seems as if you would hold out your hand to all humanity, share all you have, take in every lost soul. It's a look you get at Christmastime, even when you yourself are not very cheerful. And there's just something about you, I suppose, some change that a friend sees even if no one else does."
Holmes considered that. "Joy," he finally said. "Not happiness, which many people think joy is, but real joy. A glimpse of something real and true and good. Do you understand me?"
"I think I do."
"Good, for I'm not entirely certain I do. The world is cruel out there, Watson, and my wishing cannot make it not so. I cannot share all I have without myself becoming destitute, and I cannot take in every lost soul. Out there, the glimpse we get of a kind world is just a glimpse." He finally turned away from the window, then, smiled warmly at his friend, But in here," he proclaimed, "is a good friend and a warm fire and a quiet evening ahead of us, so let us enjoy it while we may. Happy Christmas, Watson."
"Happy Christmas Holmes," Watson answered with a smile of his own. And despite the pain, Watson couldn't help but be content.
For the prompt from Book girl fan - Yule greetings to all!
Happy Christmas, reader :)
J. R. R. Tolkien wrote the essay "On Fairy Stories" in which he attempted to address the complexities of fairy tales (and which ends with one of my favorite lines). In the essay, Tolkien coins and describes the eucatastrophe, or 'good catastrophe,' wherein everything that is wrong suddenly gets put right. I think about eucatastrophe often, of sudden and miraculous grace, of the denial of final defeat, of joy poignant as grief (however fleeting that glimpse is). That's like what Christmas is to me: a glimpse beyond the walls of the world, showing us what the world can, and will, one day, be. So happy Christmas, and may you have happy new year!
From "On Fairy Stories"
At least I would say that Tragedy is the true form of Drama, its highest function; but the opposite is true of Fairy-story. Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite—I will call it Eucatastrophe. The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function. The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous "turn" (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially "escapist," nor "fugitive." In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.