Hogfather

     The Dean raised his eyebrows. 'Of course! We didn't go creeping  around the country pinching it out of other people's hedges, like some people did,' he snapped.

     'That's traditional! That's part of the fun!'

     'Celebrating Hogswatch with stolen greenery?'

     Ridcully put his hand over his eyes.

     The  word for  this,  he had heard, was 'cabin fever'.  When people had been  cooped up for too long in  the dark  days of  the winter, they  always tended to get on one another's  nerves, although there was probably a school of thought that would hold that  spending your time in a university with more than five thousand known rooms, a huge library, the best kitchens in the city, its own brewery,  dairy, extensive wine cellar, laundry,  barber shop, cloisters and skittle alley was  testing the definition of 'cooped up' a little. Mind you, wizards could  get  on one  another's nerves  in opposite  corners of a very large field.

     'Just shut up, will you?' he said. 'It's Hogswatch! That's not the time for silly arguments, all right?'

     'Oh, yes  it  is,' said the Chair of Indefinite  Studies glumly.  'It's exactly  the time  for silly arguments. In our family we  were lucky  to get through  dinner without  a  reprise  of  What  A Shame Henry Didn't Go  Into Business  With Our Ron.  Or  Why Hasn't Anyone  Taught Those Kids  To  Use A Knife? That was another favourite.'

     'And the sulks,' said Ponder Stibbons.

     'Oh, the  sulks,' said  the  Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Not a proper Hogswatch without everyone sitting staring at different walls.'

     'The games were worse,' said Ponder.

     'Worse than the kids hitting one another with their toys, do you think? Not a proper Hogswatch  afternoon without  wheels and bits  of broken  dolly everywhere and everyone whining. Assault and battery included.'

     'We had  a  game called Hunt the Slipper,'  said Ponder. 'Someone hid a slipper. And then we had to find it. And then we had a row.'

     'It's not really bad,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'I mean, not  proper Hogswatch bad, unless everyone's wearing  a paper  hat. There's always that  bit, isn't  there, when  someone's horrible great-aunt puts on a paper hat and smirks at everyone because she's being so bohemian.'

     'I'd forgotten  about  the paper hats,'  said the  Chair of  Indefinite Studies. 'Oh, dear.'

     'And then later on someone'll suggest a board game,' said Ponder.

     'That's right. Where no one exactly remembers all the rules.'

     'Which doesn't stop someone suggesting that you play for pennies.'

     'And  five minutes later there's two people not speaking to one another for the rest of their lives because of tuppence.'

     'And some horrible little kid...'

     'I know, I  know! Some  little  kid who's been allowed to stay  up wins everyone's money by being a nasty little cut- throat swot!'

     'Right!'

     'Er . . .'  said  Ponder,  who rather  suspected that  he had been that child.

     'And don't forget the  presents,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, as  if  reading off some  internal  list of gloom.  'How  ...  how  full  of potential they seem in all that paper,  how  pregnant with possibilities ... and then you open them and basically the wrapping paper was more interesting and  you have to  say  "How thoughtful, that will come  in  handy!' It's not better to give than to receive, in my opinion, it's just less embarrassing.'

     'I've worked out,' said  the  Senior Wrangler, 'that over  the years  I have been a net exporter of Hogswatch presents--'

     'Oh, everyone is,' said the Chair. 'You spend a fortune on other people and what you get when all the  paper is  cleared away is one slipper  that's the wrong colour and a book about earwax.'

     Ridcully sat in  horrified  amazement.  He'd always enjoyed  Hogswatch, every bit of  it. He'd  enjoyed seeing ardent  relatives,  he'd enjoyed  the food,  he'd been good at games like Chase My  Neighbour  Up The  Passage and Hooray Jolly  Tinker. He was  always the first  to don a paper  hat. He felt that  paper  hats lent a special festive air to the occasion. And  he always very carefully read the messages on Hogswatch cards and found time for a few kind thoughts about the sender.

     Listening to his  wizards was like watching someone kick apart a doll's house.

     'At least the Hogswatch cracker mottoes are fun...?' he ventured.

     They all turned to look at him, and then turned away again.

     'If you have the sense of humour of a wire coathanger,' said the Senior Wrangler.

     'Oh dear,' said Ridcully. 'Then perhaps there isn't a Hogfather if  all you chaps are sitting  around with  long  faces. He's not  the  sort  to let people go around being miserable!'

     'Ridcully, he's just some  old winter god,'  said  the  Senior Wrangler wearily. 'He's not the Cheerful Fairy or anything.'

     The Lecturer  in  Recent Runes raised his chin  from his  hands.  'What Cheerful Fairy?'