It was Christmas of 2006 and I was thinking of a plot for a short story to submit to our local paper for their Holiday Contest. I didn't want the piece to be sappy. The year before, I submitted a piece called "Gift Exchange" which was about a girl who makes friends with the new boarder in her house and that bordered a little on sappy. This time, I wanted to turn the stereotype of the holiday story on its ear. I wanted a piece that would scare people.
I thought of holiday traditions I grew up with in the Philippines, where I spent the first 15 years of my life. My family put up a fake five-foot-tall Christmas tree in our living room which I liked to stare at while listening to the Carpenters' Christmas Portrait album. That's probably scary to some people, but to me that was a pleasant experience. We put up a Santa poster, had a Christmas party and went to mass on Christmas Eve. On New Year's Eve, we also went to mass. At the stroke of midnight, my siblings and I would jump (in the middle of mass) because there is a Philippine superstition that if you jump at midnight, you will get taller.
I decided the story would be set in a Philippine province on New Year's Eve, and the main character would be a Filipino-American boy who kicks a nuno sa punso (a mound with an elf) and gets cursed on New Year's Eve. When he jumps in mass, instead of getting taller, he shrinks to the size of an ant.
The story came to me easily. When I was finished, I looked at it and went, "Whoa. Where'd that come from?" I submitted it and got surprised reactions from family and friends. "I didn't know you had that in you," was the general feedback. I'm a pink-lover and a girly-girl (see my other blog http://pink-ink-pink.blogspot.com), and I enjoyed shocking people.
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