Several years ago, I sat down to write a short story for Christmas. I wanted to set it in the Holy Land. But I wanted it to be something different than most of the “Holy Land Christmas stories” I’d read. Everyone focuses on the First Christmas, looking for new ways to approach that wonderful night.
But for me, in the back of my head, other things were bubbling up, wanting to be addressed. For instance, the terrible Slaughter of the Innocents that Herod sent down upon the town of Bethlehem, in his fear of a divinely appointed rival king. I did not want this to be an easy story.
So I wrote it. And then it sat neglected in my files. Because it was a holiday story, there’s a limited window for introducing it to an audience during the year. And because my daily life was occupied by many other things, I never got around to sending it out to magazines. It isn’t a very long story — just over 2,000 words in fact.
The story sank lower in “the pile” – in this case, a file on a computer I used less and less and eventually replaced. The hard drive from the old computer was extracted and became an external hard drive used for storage purposes. At the time that occured, I did not review the files on it: after all, I wasn’t losing the drive or the data. And there it sat, neglected if not entirely forgotten.
Recently, I was reviewing the files on the old drive and “found” the story again. It still pleased me. I decided to put it up on my website. Because it was written more to manifest some of my feelings about Christmas, I didn’t really want to regard it as a “commercial property.” But stories are made to be shared, and so now, finally, I am getting around to putting it before an audience.
All this is a rather long winded way to introduce the story: THE WINTER STRANGER. I hope you all find something in the story that speaks to you. And please, if you are so moved, let me know your reactions to the story.
