Holidays? Holy Days? Pen It To Win It!

The Lead-In

Are you ready for the upcoming holidays? We're in that stretch of the year where it feels like they're never ending. Christmas decorations are in stores before Halloween costumes have left them. Thanksgiving is around the corner. And that's not even counting the less well-known holidays (at least in America) like Rosh Hashanah. But hey, rather than stress about the presents you haven't bought yet or how to navigate the tumultuous waters of arranging gatherings that everyone can attend, let's have some stories!

Here's what I'm thinking:

The Challenge

Write an original story or poem of any length between now and Thanksgiving (I'm talking the American version here, so November 28th, for the uninitiated). Any genre will do, and any style. It can be fiction or nonfiction; I'm easy.

The key is that it has to include a mention of three different holidays and/or holy days. After all, the word holiday comes from the phrase holy days, so it's only fair to include holy days in a holidays contest! It doesn't matter which holidays you choose (or which holy days). Any culture or religion is welcome.

The prizes are as follows: $10 for first place and $5 for second place. I will also mention the winners on my Twitter/X and Facebook pages.

The Rules

• Each entry must include a reference to at least three holidays or holy days (mentioned by name).
• Entrants must leave a comment below, with a link to their published story, and each entry must include a link back to this original post. It took me a minute to figure out how to do this when I first tried entering these contests myself, so here's the deets: When you're writing a story, there's a little plus sign that appears on the left side of your writing area when you go to a new line. If you click that, you can choose "Embed link." At that point, you will simply copy the link from this page and post it into the bar that appears under the "Embed link" area. Voila! Like magic, a link to this page will embed into your page!
• Entries can include any stories that you have written for Vocal Media at any time. I recommend writing new stories for this contest particularly, because it may seem forced if you just try to throw holiday references into old stories, which may decrease your odds of winning the contest, but that decision is ultimately up to you.
• You can enter this contest as many times as you like!

Depending on how many entries there end up being, it will most likely take me a while to get through them all, so please be patient. A hard deadline for me to choose the winners will be Christmas of this year, but I expect to have chosen before then. I will be paying out to winners via the Tips feature on Vocal, so please verify that your Stripe account is in good standing and that you can receive tips. Thanks so much!

Tips

I tend to be a fairly critical reader, so here are some recommendations for keeping my interest:

• Be sure to use spell check and give the story at least a once-over for grammatical issues (I can get past some typos and grammatical errors, but I assure you that it will affect my judgment if any remain, at least on a subconscious level).
• Try to give me something somewhat unpredictable to read (I'm not saying that a predictable story absolutely won't win, but it probably won't)
• Give enough description to keep my interest, but don't go into too much detail about what color and sharpness the blades of grass are (unless there is some actual purpose to that in the story).
• Please use dialogue tags every once in a while when people are talking (I'm easily confused, and I don't want to have to keep going back to where I knew who was talking and then start counting to figure out who is talking now).

And In Closing

This should be a fun contest for everyone! Be sure to read through some of the other entries and leave a comment on here letting us know what you thought. Also, share the contest here and there so that everyone has a chance to join. I look forward to seeing what you all have to say!

Author's Note: This is the first contest I've ever hosted on here. I truly hope you enjoy it! If you'd like to show your support, please feel free to leave a comment, click the heart, and subscribe!