The Little Red Hen Writes Christmas Cards
One day, near the end of the year, the Little Red Hen began receiving a lot of mail from her friends. She sat down with her pile of cards and put her little red head on the table on top of them. “It is that time of year again already, isn’t it?” she asked herself.
So the Little Red Hen called her housemates in and said, “We need to make the Christmas card. Who will help me choose the pictures?”
“Not I,” said the Duck.
“Not I,” said the Goose.
“Not I,” said the Pig, who was scrolling through Instagram and obviously had lots of access to photos and an eye for that kind of thing.
“Well, I guess I’ll choose the photos myself,” said the Little Red Hen, and she did. She scrolled and cropped and retouched until all of the animals had a decent picture of themselves for the card, preferably to show an appropriate, but not braggy, variety of backgrounds and activities from the past year.
After she selected the pictures, she sighed and said, “Who will help me write the cards?”
“Not I,” said the pig.
“Not I,” said the duck.
“Not I,” said the goose, who was adding to a thread on Twitter about the yaasification of meme culture.
“Then, I guess I’ll try to remember four animals’ year of activities by myself,” said the Little Red Hen, and she did. She thought carefully about what achievements, awards, and anecdotes, including a funny, but telling, story about pig falling asleep in the bathtub.
When she was done, a shop printed the cards and the Little Red Hen sat down with the list of their friends and family. “Who will help me address the cards?” asked the Little Red Hen.
“Not I,” said the goose.
“Not I,” said the pig.
“Not I,” said the duck, who was stuffing his beak with almond cookies that the Hen had made for the neighborhood cookie exchange.
“Well, fuck, I guess I’ll just address them myself,” said the Little Red Hen. “And please eat over a plate at least!”
So the Little Red Hen addressed the cards. She licked and closed the envelopes and thought about George Costanza’s fiance because she had been streaming a lot of Seinfeld while baking the cookies that were getting eaten in the living room she had vacuumed to make room for the tree she had hauled in from the corner lot by herself because her housemates had been drinking whiskey-eggnogs and forgot about her g-cal invite.
After two whiskey-neats (eggnog was actually, honestly, more than insulting to keep in the house? How dare they?), the Little Red Hen opened a card from her friend, The Little Engine that Could. The Engine wrote that her new year’s resolution was setting more healthy emotional boundaries and learning to say no.
The Little Red Hen did not ask her housemates to mail the cards. She mailed them herself (the mailbox was just at the end of the driveway and hell if she was letting them take credit for anything). The next day, the housemates went to play laser tag, and the Little Red Hen changed the locks.
The duck, the goose, and the pig all banged on the door, but the Little Red Hen just ate an entire loaf of fresh bread by herself, with earbuds blasting Mariah Carey, and thought how good life was when you are not an animal people traditionally eat on Christmas.
