26Shorts2026: prompt --- set in a festive season

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                  🟠     26 Short Stories for 2026
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                  🟠      SET IN A FESTIVE SEASON
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Discuss and share - topic: adventure. This can be any festivity, holidays or celebration.

Remember when you are doing this you are also inspiring others towards your reads; to make it easier for others to see the content of your message, start your message with one more of the following keywords (and feel free to write the word or use the emoji):

keywords to highlight your message:

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Extras, again, to help others see your message, and if you know then follow your chosen keyword(s) with:

• title of story / book / collection / etc
  
• name of author
  
• date first published
  
• and anything else like, setting or if it could fit other prompts, etc.


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  Stories are wonderful, and get better when we inspire each other with the stories we have found and read.
  
  #26shorts2026

Completed prompt / 🎉
"set in a festive season" read December 30

"Santa's Children" by Italo Calvino 1963. 5 stars

With so many lucky 5 star reads that I've encountered you may wonder if I'm a push over. I might be but this is Calvino!

A quirky but an entirely recognizable story about the typical Western Christmas frenzy, taken to its full heights. I'm adding this story to my annual Christmas Reading tradition going forward. It's a jolly, fat finger pointing at us, giving us a much needed laugh at ourselves, our gullibility and our vulnerability.

Plus a touch of appropriate sadness at the state of what is, or should be, a holy season, as well.

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"Santa's Children" is part of the short story collection Marcovaldo: or the Seasons in the City read with Goodreads' group The Short Story Club here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1187035-the-short-story-club
My full 26Shorts2026 log is here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/376315

🎉 A festive season:

"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" (1975) by Ursula Leguin
The village of Omelas' pays a steep price to underwrite its Festival of Summer
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ My first taste of anything by Ursula K. Le Guin and I want more..
Collection: The River Reader
📘 January 2, 2026

>3 Nonconformisto: This story has been among my 26shorts2026 too! Wasn't it amazing? So much to think about, which is Le Guin's usual m.o. Another Le Guin you might like, one that I liked quite a lot was her novel The Lathe of Heaven.

>4 DebiCates: It was a delicious piece of writing, and I regret having ignored Le Guin all these years. Thank you for the recommendation.