• Published 3rd Dec 2014
  • 2,177 Views, 32 Comments

The True Meaning of Christmas - Probably Minion



Twilight rejoins her friends from CHS to celebrate Christmas.

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Chapter 6

At around midnight when everyone fell asleep in Pinkie's room, the alarm went off on Applebloom's iPhone for midnight which she set intentionally for one reason, so she, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo could see Santa Claus.

"Sweetie, Scoots, wake up! I think Santa is gonna be here any second now!" whispered Applebloom.

The CMC quickly tiptoed downstairs dragging their blankets and pillows downstairs to the living room where the tree was. They fell asleep for about an hour and a half and woke up to the sound of coal falling down the chimney and bells ringing. And all of a sudden, Santa Claus appeared in all his glory with his bag of toys.

"Oh my! Looks like someone was wanting to see me do my magic!" said Santa when he saw that the CMC were in the living room.

Sweetie Belle got up despite the fact she was only half awake and then fully woke up when she realized she was staring Santa right in the face.

"Oh my gosh! Are you really Santa Claus?!?!" whispered Sweetie Belle.

"The one and only. Merry Christmas Sweetie Belle. I see you, Applebloom, and Scootaloo joined your sisters for their Christmas Eve sleepover. I haven't seen one of those in a while." said Santa.

"Yeah. It was kind of a last minute invitation since we originally were gonna have our own Christmas Eve sleepover at Applebloom's house. We thought it would only be right to join our sisters on Christmas Eve." said Scootaloo.

"Well according to my list, all three of you were on my good list this year! That means you get everything you put on your wishlist." said Santa.

"YAY!" said the CMC.

They then watched Santa spend about the next hour or so place all the presents that the CMC as well as the Mane 7 asked Santa to bring them under the tree. Right before Santa was ready to leave, Sweetie Belle had one more request.

"Hey Santa before you go, can me, Applebloom, and Scootaloo take a selfie with you so we can prove to the world that you're real?" asked Sweetie Belle.

"Yeah sure, I don't see why not." said Santa.

After taking a selfie, Santa waved good-bye and was gone in the blink of an eye.

"That was so awesome! We were probably the first people to talk to Santa in person!" said Scootaloo.
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At around 4 AM, the CMC woke up and saw that the kitchen light was on. They walked over to the kitchen and saw Sunset Shimmer pull out a medium-sized sauce pan.

"Hey Sunset, what are y'all doing at 4 in the morning?" asked Applebloom.

"Oh uh nothing. I'm making hot chocolate pudding for everyone to eat as an 'appetizer' before we open gifts and then have a real breakfast." said Sunset.

"Hey Sunset, we gotta show you something that's gonna blow your mind! Last night, we woke up at around midnight and sneaked downstairs so we can Santa and guess what, we saw him and he brought us everything we wished for and we even took a selfie with him!" said Scootaloo.

"Haha, likely story. I want proof." said Sunset as she was pouring in the pudding mix into the pot.

"Do you call this legit?!?!?!" asked Sweetie Belle as she pulled up the selfie that she, Applebloom, and Scootaloo took with Santa on her phone.

"WHAT?!?!?!?! You mean............... Santa really agreed to take a selfie with you?!?!?! THAT IS SO AWESOME!!!!!" said Sunset.

"Yeah I know right. Now we'll actually have something we can brag about to Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara." said Scootaloo.

"Ok ok, let's not get ahead of ourselves. The pudding is ready. You wanna try some?" said Sunset.

"Yeah sure." said Applebloom.

Sunset gave Applebloom a cup of the pudding and Applebloom took a bite of it.

"This is good!" said Applebloom.

"Glad you liked it. I think you should go awake everyone else so we can open presents." said Sunset.

"Alrighty then!" said Sweetie Belle and the CMC ran upstairs to wake the others.

Comments ( 10 )

Santa really agreed to take a selfie with you?!?!?! THAT IS SO AWESOME!!!!!" said Sunset.

LOL!!! Funniest line ever! :pinkiehappy:

Liked how you made Santa take a selfie with the cmc. :twilightsmile:

Finally got to review this. It's a very cute story so far, and I do have some suggestions for improvement. As you requested, I'm dropping them here in the comments. I'll start with the story as a whole and work my way down to smaller line-edit-level things. Forgive me if it gets a little rambling, I'm on my lunch break, so I don't really have time to make it concise.

Conflict
There's hardly any of it. Not every story needs to be one long fight scene, but there's always some kind of conflict, even if it's only internal. I expected this story to have its conflict centered around the fact that Twilight abandoned one set of friends at the last minute to go hang out with the other, but so far, there hasn't even been a hint of guilt, let alone external repercussions. No matter how true their friendship is, her Equestrian friends should be a teensy bit disappointed. And it should be nagging at her conscience, too. Even just a little. Without some kind of conflict, there's no story, just a series of scenes.

Pacing
Speaking of scenes, it's been mentioned in other comments that the pacing is far too fast. This is probably true; I can't help much with this, because I tend to have the same problem. The best advice I can give you is this: Things can happen that aren't the primary plot points, as long as they contribute to the story. The contributions don't have to be major. It can be something as small as a little character building, setting the mood, or developing the theme. Which leads me nicely to the next point.

Theme
It's hard to say for sure what the main theme of the story is. My first impression was that it would be about Twilight learning about the true meaning of Christmas (per the title). Religious history aside, I assume the "true" meaning is meant to be about enjoying the company of (and being thankful for) family and friends. But without any apparent conflict, there's not much to tie the theme to, so it's hard to make it stand out.

The other option is for it to be about resolving conflicting opinions of what Christmas is about. The kids think it's about presents. Rarity and Fluttershy focus on being thankful for things while you have them, and Applejack always takes time to remember what she's already lost. Twilight is, of course, just fascinated by learning about a foreign culture's holidays. Problem is, this is all established in Chapter 5, and has little effect on the rest of the story. Which is doubly odd because Chapter 5 shares its title with the story; normally that would make it the climax, where the differing opinions that have been threaded throughout the previous chapters are finally brought to some kind of agreement.

Extra Stuff
Now, despite the complaint that the pacing is too fast, there's actually unnecessary stuff in here. Rainbow Dash coming with her is one; it does (as far as I can see from the chapters posted thus far) absolutely nothing to progress the story or build up the characters or the theme, whatever it may be. If there was a hint of guilt about them leaving their friends behind, I'd say maybe Dash was going to be the one who came up with a clever solution to bring the rest of her Equestrian friends there (and maybe, just for laughs, the entire rest of Ponyville). But without any indication that this is the conflict of the story - or, really, any indication of conflict in the story at all - there's nothing for her to resolve. Given that she barely participates in the story, she's left feeling pretty pointless.

The selfie with Santa is funny, so I'll skip over that and assume that it could somehow be worked in as a legitimate part of the story. Which brings me to the Humanquestria (it's a word now) thing as a whole. Is it even necessary? That depends on the what the point of the story is. If it's about Twilight having to deal with split loyalties, then her human friends are a perfectly good source of that conflict. If it's about trying to work out the meaning of Christmas from apparently conflicting angles, then no, it could just as easily be ponies.

Another one that depends on the theme is Applejack's story in Chapter 5. It's a weird negative mood spike compared to the rest of the story. It's absolutely necessary if the story is about resolving conflicting views on the meaning of Christmas - Applejack's perspective is an important part of that, and something that a lot of people have to deal with. If that's not the point, though, then her bit sticks out as sort of emotionally off-kilter from the warm fuzzy remainder of the story.

Friends and Family
Maybe I'm being a little too critical pointing this out, because it's basically universal in the fandom, but Twilight's family seems to have vanished. Given the ease of travel for a teleporting unicorn pegasus with unlimited access to the kingdom's railways (who's going to say there's no seat open for a princess?), I'd be really surprised to see Twilight doing anything but spending Christmas with her family. Days before or after it can be spent with friends, sure, but she's close enough with her family that there's no way she'd miss spending Christmas day with them. (And for that matter, many of her friends have established known living family as well.) But like I said, family is handwaved away often enough in the fandom that it's almost assumed now anyway.

Line Edits
Some little things I caught as I went through it:

Overall
Quotations - When a quotation ends but the sentence continues beyond it (if you're putting a "said" after it), there should be a comma at the end of the quotation. This also applies to a couple of places where you ended the quote with a period; if the sentence isn't over yet, it's a comma. For example: "I wonder if my CHS friends are trying to send me a message," said Twilight.

Chapter 1
Timing - The introduction says it's Hearth Warming's Eve, but the story actually begins a couple of days before that.
"wasn't not" - Avoid the double negative if you can. It makes readers have to stop and think about what you mean, and speedbumps like that in your story are disruptive to the flow of it.
"What the hey" - It's usually "hay" in Equestria, for the pun.
"I guess that makes since" - sense

Chapter 3
"Christmas ghost stories" - Not wrong, actually kind of awesome. I think we need more emphasis on how weird an idea this is (Ebenezer Scrooge aside).
Snowball fights - It seems like unicorns, at least, would have these. And if Twilight's not familiar with the idea of a snowball fight, then she shouldn't know enough about the rules to suggest that the CMC make a team (she wouldn't know that it was a team-based game).

Chapter 4
"the Mane 7 along the CMC" - along with
"first owner of business" - first order
Snowball fights again - Also, it seems pretty unfair for a whole gang of older kids to be playing against only three younger ones. Maybe even out the teams a little more. Scootaloo would be thrilled to have one of the Dashes on her side. Either that or put more emphasis on how confident Applebloom must be to agree to such unbalanced teams.

Chapter 5
"the people with love" - the people we love
"understanding that Christmas" - understanding what Christmas

Chapter 6
"choclate" - chocolate
"go awake everyone else" - wake, or wake up

One final note
Not about the story itself, but in the future, the best time to bring in an editor will be before publishing. You only get one shot on the "new stories" list, and if it's not already polished at that point, you're going to miss out on a lot of potential readers. This applies to full stories and serially published ones equally - the editor should either have the full story on hand, or for stories published chapter-by-chapter, the initial chapter(s) and at least a general outline of where the story is going to end up. That'll assure that they can do the best job they can catching any flaws in the overall story, and it'll give you the chance to make the best first impression you can on potential readers.

Hopefully all this rambling has been helpful, I know it got a bit long there. I'll be interested to see the conclusion of the story.

As hilarious as that selfie thing was and Sunset's reaction to it, I honestly would've liked it if only the CMC could see Santa in the photo cos they believe in him. :pinkiehappy:

5397361

conflict: this is supposed to be a fluff story- not an epic. you don't NEED there to be a major conflict.
pacing is somewhat of an issue, I'll admit, but again, this story seems to be more of a fluff story about Twilight ( and Rainbow Dash) spending christmas with the EQG girls
friends and family: I hate to say it, but I suspect twilight is somewhat of an ass when it comes to her family- note that in Season 2, she had been out of contact with Shining Armour for long enough that his wedding was a total surprise to her. Furthermore, in my experience, visiting family doesn't have to be on christmas eve/day. Since twilight and Rainbow Dash are only expecting to be gone for a couple days, it's entirely possible they are planning on visiting their family afterwards. As for the other members of the Mane 6, Fluttershy only has her animals- so she's probably ask AJ or RD to make sure the animals are fed. Rarity's parents seem to be away most of the time, judging by how Sweetie Belle seems a somewhat permanent resident in the Boutique. Ergo, its not hard to believe they're off on another one- and Sweetie Belle could stay with AJ in all likelihood. Pinkie's family probably don't even bother celebrating |Hearts Warming Eve if Pinkie's right about tem just woring all the time is true. Ergo, there are good reasons why none of the Mane 6 have plans.

5667139 Thanks for backing me up! I really appreciate it! :) :derpytongue2: :rainbowkiss:

:duck: I have nothing against the story, and it has a good premise that could make something cute...but I'm just seeing a lot of ignorance in here about the true meaning of Christmas. :twilightblush:

Sooooo this story has Santa Claus in it. . . . . . . . . .Santa. . .Claus. . . . . . . . . . :|

6682480 Thanks for the tip. I think I might do that! :)

6426646 I'm just trying to keep religious aspects out of my story since not all bronies are Catholic and celebrate Christmas like me. That's the only reason why I didn't mention Jesus in it.

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