Hey, thanks for joining me for another installment of Christmas in quarantine. It's Christmas

past's impromptu mini-series of indeterminate length. Stay subscribed for one new episode every

single day until things are looking better on the COVID-19 crisis. Before we get started, as always,

I hope that you are staying safe and healthy, that you're following all of the common-sense

guidelines, treating the situation with the seriousness it deserves, and taking your advice

only from trained medical professionals. Also, I'd love to hear how you're doing and what

you've been up to. You can reach out any time at Christmas Past podcast podcast at gmail.com or find me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can check

the show notes for this episode for links to all of that. Now today's episode is another

installment of Storytime. For the last couple of weeks, I've been often reading you

classic Christmas tales, but today we're taking things

a bit more contemporary.

Our friend Sarah Tipper has shared another one of her short stories with us.

You may recall that I read another one of hers called Keep It All the Year back in 2019 during

some of those Burr Month's bonus episodes.

Today's piece is called Deck the Halls, and it tells the story of a young woman taking her grandfather to receive elder care.

I'll come back at the end to say goodbye, but for now, please enjoy Deck the Halls by Sarah Tipper.

She sat on the stone steps of the halls of residence, despite the chill of early December,

which she didn't feel.

She had a nest made up of her term worth of belongings around her.

Heavy books, both in weight and content, there was a René Descartes and a Peter Singer,

her favorite clothes, CDs, her personality was distilled into a suitcase, an army

rucksack, and three large purple plastic boxes. The things she had flown the nest with,

...