Christmas story. Santa Claus came to the kindergarten festivities. When he gave me the present and I saw that he was missing three fingers from his right hand, I started to cry. I told my brother and, without not so much of a thought, he said to me that Rudolph ate them. I was in shock. As if the situation wasn't strange enough, three weeks later, while I was shopping with my parents, I noticed that mister Aurel, the butcher, had the same disability as Santa. I looked carefully and started to cry. I became a vegetarian.
Carmen Tot
I don't know how the shepherds that come down from the mountains set their clocks, but every year, on Christmas Eve, the flocks start flowing through the village, my dad goes out at the gate with warm brandy and braided bread and is happy as a child; where are you good folks coming from? And the shepherds stop and speak in low voices, the way they would describe the creation of the world. The sheep stand still, and the donkeys in full winter coating watch the light at our window as if it were the only one on earth. Old man, I whisper to the divinely long time all of a sudden, old man, you have been kind to me once again.
Amalia Melnic
He was a so-called writer. He delighted with rhymes, quatrains and other fictions. In the word soup, he couldn't stand Christmas, it seemed too superficial to him, too commercial. Among the shopping rush, food, there were false presents, false smiles. He had decided that this year he was going to celebrate Yule, at least the pagans were more believable in their winter celebration. So he had set out to put in writing a story about Goddess Winter, where the old lady had been left with no snow and charm. Maybe next year he would win himself a literary award.
(Translated by Ruxandra Adriana Dodoiu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.