Christmas in … April?
While it’s not quite December and not quite time for Christmas in July, we thought you might enjoy this attempt at Christmas in April with Emily Drake‘s ‘Christmas Trappings’ from Pulp Literature Issue 49. Enjoy an excerpt of this story below, and be sure to pick up a copy of Issue 49, Winter 2026 to find out what happens next!
Christmas Trappings
by Emily Drake
Natalie Cottle held Christmas in the highest regard. She loved snowy Christmas Eves, eggnog with spiced rum and freshly grated nutmeg, and elegant, perfectly wrapped presents that brought out a childlike delight. She donated to food hampers and toy drives, letting the kindness and generosity of the season wash over her until she was drenched in Christmas spirit. But she also believed it would be a gift to the entire neighbourhood if she could somehow do away with the horrible Christmas inflatables that littered the front yard of the Pugh house.
Her issue was not with ornaments as a whole; she decorated for the season, too. Each yuletide she draped an evergreen garland, complete with fairy lights, across her fireplace mantel. Nestled in her balsam fir every year were whimsical collectibles from her favourite designer, and delicate glass balls — matte, not shiny — reflected the lights woven throughout the branches. Once she added the glass icicles and the long red teardrops, the tree was sumptuous. Simply dripping with Christmas.
Inflatables, though, were cheap and ugly. A grotesque example of the commercialization of the holidays. Further, the Pughs followed no aesthetic when it came to their placement. They just plopped them on the lawn.
She’d lived in her little bay-and-gable house for about a year when young Mr and Mrs Pugh moved into the neighbourhood. They’d started a family not long after that, which was when the first blow-up snowman had appeared: tacky, but seasonal. Natalie was dismayed when a green bauble ornament showed up on the other side of the yard. The following year, there were two penguins. Not a set of penguins, oh no. Each was meant to be a one-off, but they were now a mismatched and under-inflated pair, leaning on each other like overserved frat boys. It wasn’t long before air-filled atrocities filled the yard — the only yard she could see perfectly from the window of her living room.
Natalie tried to imagine the Pugh family gathering in the distant future, the kids all grown, children of their own tucked into their beds. She imagined them reminiscing about the Christmases of their childhoods, mugs of cocoa cradled to their chests. “It just didn’t feel like the holidays,” one of them would sigh, “until Dad put out the inflatable Scooby-Doo.”
She felt sad for them. The very point of Christmas traditions was that they were traditional. Meaningful. Reminiscent of days gone by. If her brother chose to stop by for Christmas this year, for example, with just one look around her house he’d feel like he was home for the holidays — and not at a theme park.
The other problem was that the Pughs set up the balloons earlier with each passing year. As a rule, Natalie’s own decorations went up no earlier than the end of the first week of December. Any time after that was fine, but never before, and she had them all down and boxed away on the sixth of January, like a responsible citizen. It stood to reason, then, that when the army of festive abominations appeared in front of the Pugh house the day after Hallowe’en, she was affronted. Had this family no decency?
Find the full story in Pulp Literature Issue 49, Winter 2026
Emily Drake is a Toronto-based writer also working as an assistant director in the film industry. She loves dressing up her home for Christmas — using tasteful and traditional ornaments, of course.
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