A Christmas Mystery

It looked like a normal day in the Gingerbread neighborhood at first.

But wait!  Something appears to be wrong!  What's that Snowman hiding??  And there are Gummi Bears everywhere!  What's going on here??

It looks like something terrible has happened!  There are signs of a struggle everywhere!

 Oh no!  There's a dead Gingerbread Man!  Why is the Snowman hiding the body??

The Gingerbread Man was beheaded, and his hand was cut off!  Who would do such a thing?

And someone has put a Gummi Bear over the front door like some kind of sick Christmas wreath/decoration!  (Not to mention the one decorating the top of the Christmas tree!)

And there are two dead Gummi Bears in the yard!

Notice the "Santa Bear" stuck in the chimney.  Victim?  Or murderer?

And this one!  Why would a green Gummi Bear wear a green fez?  No self-respecting Bear would wear a fez that matches its own coloring!  Unless it has something to hide. . .

Those orange Gummi Bears on the top of the roof. . .are they sleeping?  Or dead??

And what about the Bear at the end of the sidewalk?  He's playing with a ball, like nothing unusual has happened.  I think he Knows Something, but he's not talking.  None of them are.

I'm starting to feel like Scrooge...

No, not Scrooge McDuck, Ebenezer Scrooge.  (Though Scrooge McDuck has some pretty nifty spats, and lots of cool gadgets...but we're not talking about Ducktales here.)

We had Thanksgiving dinner at Dave's folks' place this year, and it was okay.  Everyone got together and we had good food.  But I kinda just wanted to be at home having a somewhat less crazy day.  (And now I kinda feel bad about saying that because at least some of my family is going to read this and have their feelings hurt, which isn't what I mean at all.)  I think for Christmas we're planning on just doing a quiet day at home, which is good.


But the thing is, I'm not really looking forward to Christmas, and I haven't for several years now.  I'm not working, so we don't have any extra money to buy presents.  And I know it's not about presents, but it kinda is.  And it seems like such a hassle to go and get out the decorations, but at least they're not out in the garage this year, which is good, because I don't think I could get in to the garage at the moment, since someone has decided that Billings, MT needs to have a ton of snow dumped on it.  Ugh.

I'm hoping that I'll get more into the Christmas spirit soon.  I can't seem to remember what exactly it is that I like about this time of year, though.  I've only got a couple of weeks left of school for the semester (and I have another research paper that I'm really supposed to be working on right now...), followed by a month off.  (I'm really looking forward to that!)  Maybe then it'll start to get better.

Anyway...yeah, I'm not feeling very Christmas-y.  I've got Christmas music playing in the background, but it doesn't seem to be helping yet.