Archive of Our Own ^beta

1.12.

As far as Sherlock was concerned, Christmas was one of the worst seasons of the year. Not only were people generally more friendly towards each other and thus committed fewer crimes, but they also expected him to be more amiable, too. Oh, all had been good when he had been small and all that had been required of him was to sit down at the dinner table and behave “properly” as Mummy had called it. Then – at the age of four – when he had found out that Father Christmas didn’t exist and had started deducing his presents before opening them, things had become slightly awkward. Still, Sherlock had never minded celebrating with his family, if only to see Mycroft being forced to act friendly towards him.

So it was not his family, but all other people that constituted the problem that was Christmas. People he met on the street or in shops and who – for some rationally inexplicable reason – expected him to smile and greet them with silly Christmas wishes. Or people from work, namely the incapable lot Lestrade wasted his time with, who suddenly expected him to not only ignore their incompetence in matter of business, but also their many other shortcomings whether of intellectual or personal nature. Sherlock had no clue as to what gave people these weird ideas of how he should change his ways all of a sudden, simply because societal norms dictated that Christmas was a time of general cheerfulness and benevolence.

And now this new horror flashed its shiny white teeth at him.

The day had started innocently enough with a message from Lestrade asking him to come to the Yard to help with a case. Unsurprisingly, the case had been so easy that Sherlock solved it in just under five minutes without even having to see the crime scene. Sometimes he did wonder how Lestrade had got his work done before he had met him. Then Donovan had entered the DI’s office and things had taken a weird turn.

Sherlock was still wondering what exactly had possessed her to ask not only Lestrade but also him to accompany her when they entered the main office. To his utter shock many other police men were already waiting in there and it turned out that preparations for some Christmas tradition called “Secret Santa” were on the way. Apparently the very same people who couldn’t identify a murderer even with his name spelled out to them carefully by Sherlock found the uttermost joy in trying to find out who was going to give them a secret present for Christmas. Or maybe the goal was not to find out – Sherlock wasn’t sure whether he had deleted that important aspect of the game – in which case they were particularly up to the task.

Before he could voice any of his insights into the very nature of this tradition, the ceremony of distributing little slips of paper containing the participants’ names began. Sherlock was busy watching people closely in order to determine their recipient by the degree of happiness, confusion or frustration that showed on their faces, so at first he didn’t notice when the officer who was carrying the hat full of names around stopped in front of him. As he continued standing there, however, Sherlock gave him a quick annoyed glance – and froze as the young man cleared his throat and looked at him with nervous expectation.

“Why are you expecting me to draw a name as well? I do not work here, I have no other than completely professional relations to any of you and most importantly I did not volunteer to participate in any game as uninspiring as this.”

Lestrade nudged him discreetly and gave him a half-encouraging, half-mischievous grin. “Come on, Sherlock, I have already thrown your name in there so probably someone already picked you. Be a good sport and draw a name as well. How hard can it be for you to determine the perfect present for the person you get? Once you have done that, you can spend all your free time deducing who’s got your name. Won’t that be fun?”

Really, what fun ever came from presents people decided to give to him consciously? He preferred gifts that had been discarded by everyone else (like old case files) and his favourite presents were those he wasn’t even meant to see (like almost perfect crime scenes). However, judging there was no easy way out of this situation, Sherlock merely sighed and kept his thoughts to himself.

“Alright, look, I am drawing a name”, he announced and with a sweeping gesture produced a little piece of paper from the hat. It landed unread in the pocket of his coat and the young man continued his round to the remaining police officers. Sherlock watched everyone closely, but surprisingly could not immediately observe who drew his name. Nobody showed the appropriate amount of anger, desperation or contempt Sherlock expected. Maybe this was getting interesting after all. Or maybe the friendly Christmas spirit was already affecting him, in which case he should consult John in his capacity as a doctor later. Sherlock decided it was time for him to leave before any more despicable Yarder Christmas traditions could be forced upon him and turned once more to Lestrade to ask him dryly: “Happy now?”

And indeed Lestrade smiled contently.

10.12.

“A Scotland Yard board game? Really, Sherlock, that’s the best present for Lestrade your gigantic brain can come up with?”

Unsurprisingly, John didn’t agree with the gift Sherlock had come up with. Sherlock rolled his eyes at him - John always had the strangest ideas about social conventions and traditions – and continued hurrying along the corridor of the morgue. “What about it does not fit your concept of secret gift giving? As everyone who takes part in this ‘tradition’ works for the Yard except for me, this is a perfectly disguised gift. Lestrade will never suspect me of giving him something fun either – and maybe he can be fooled into playing and therefore improve his and his team’s ability to catch criminals. I really can’t see what flaw you find in that plan.”

John sighed, so apparently he had missed something. Sherlock furled his eyebrows. Obviously, he wasn’t the person most acquainted with traditional Christmas gift giving, but he had always believed he was doing rather well given his lack of interest for these mundane and utterly boring traditions. Before he could give it more thought, John started explaining: “It’s just – you make him look like an idiot who doesn’t know his job if you give him a board game version of it. And why would he want to spend his free time doing exactly what he is doing for work every day anyway? Can’t you think of something a bit more – personal?”

So this was going to be about being friendly and personal again. Sherlock had had only bad experiences with that. “That reminds me of Mycroft”, he complained. “One year he finds ties for Christmas boring and impersonal, the next year he doesn’t know where to put that Iranian spy I got him. Why can’t people just decide what they want?”

John held the door to the morgue open, so Sherlock could rush through. “But this is a secret gift exchange – Lestrade couldn’t possibly tell you even if he knew. Oh, speaking of that, have you already figured out who picked your name?”

Sherlock gave an irritated snort. “I was sure it had to be Donovan judging by the increase of her nasty comments towards me lately. But then I saw her hide some knitting – and really, she would never dream of knitting for me. So I guess she has Anderson – although why someone would want to knit for him escapes my understanding – and I still don’t know who has my name. This is intolerable!”

John smiled. “That’s how the tradition works, Sherlock, by being surprised by your gift. Yes, I know you are going to find it silly, but one simply can’t argue with Christmas traditions.”

As if he couldn’t!

Sherlock was just drawing a deep breath to prove John wrong, when he noticed his surroundings and almost took a step backwards in shock. Apparently Molly had decided that this year the corpses in the morgue deserved a very happy and ... Christmassy Christmas. There were lights, garlands made from tree branches and Sherlock even spotted some candles sitting on a shelf carefully emptied of the paperwork it usually contained. His face brightened. As if he couldn’t argue with that.

“Look, John, you are completely wrong”, Sherlock stated waving his hand to all the silly decorations and in his sudden cheerfulness even neglected to add ‘as always’. “Take these branches here for example. A long time before anyone even thought of celebrating the festival known to us as Christmas, the Romans already used evergreen branches to decorate for their winter festival called Saturnalia and they were also used by Northern European pagans as a reminder of summer in their winter festivities.”

“And here I thought you didn’t give a damn about Christmas”, John muttered under his breath. Luckily, Molly chose this exact moment to enter the morgue. She beamed at Sherlock. “How nice of you to collect your eyes personally this time!”

Sherlock gave her half a smile. “I see you have decided to redecorate the morgue.”

“Oh, do you like it? I especially like the candles - they are cinnamon-scented!”

“Continuing the point I was making just a moment ago, you do know that candles of whatever scent they may be are in no way a true Christian Christmas tradition, don’t you? In fact, the Romans were again the first to use candles for their Saturnalia celebrations in which they were given as a sacrificial offering to their god Saturn as a symbol of his light. And of course, Pagans used candles as well as fires in their winter festivals as well, representing the sun and summer. Do you now see where this is leading to?”

“Um, Sherlock?” Molly tried to interrupt but was unblinkingly ignored. No-one could stop him right now - Sherlock was on fire!

“Oh, and that sprig of mistletoe you have so hopefully hung right above the door – even John could probably tell you that the mistletoe was already used as a magical plant for ceremonies and rituals by Celtic Druids. And this rather stupid tradition of kissing someone under the mistletoe stems from a Northern myth where the sun god Balder is killed by an arrow of mistletoe. Obviously this represents the winter solstice, the shortest day. As all creatures weep for him, he is reborn and in order to prevent this from happening again, the mistletoe is put under the protection of his mother Frigga, goddess of love. Thus for the pagans, the mistletoe represents love and the ridiculous kissing business is explained.”

“Sherlock!” Molly interrupted again, louder this time. Sherlock paused, slightly irritated, to look at her. This made her cheeks flush rather pink and she looked as if she didn’t really want to go on, but bravely continued, albeit in a lower voice: “I did not decorate for Christmas. I have only ever celebrated Yule. So obviously all decorations you will see here are taken from pagan traditions.”

Now that was unexpected and much more interesting than citing half-forgotten facts, indeed. Sherlock smiled involuntarily and without thinking said: “Now, that is intriguing, Molly. I would rather like to see a proper Yule celebration myself, too. Are you still free on the evening of winter solstice?”

John coughed as Molly turned an even darker shade of pink. Sherlock hesitated. Had he said something against some social conventions yet again? But he could not find anything offensive no matter how he looked at his words. Was it not customary to spend these winter festivities in company? Even if he only wanted to watch he could hardly be an inconvenience if Molly had been alone otherwise. Ah, maybe he should have waited until Molly invited him and not invite himself. He cleared his throat. “Um, maybe you would like to invite me to come over so I can watch your celebrations?”

Molly almost stumbled over her feet in her hurry to get pen and paper from her desk in order to write down her address for Sherlock.

21.12.

Eventually, though, things didn’t turn out the way they had been planned. The New Scotland Yard Christmas party had been decided to be held on the very same day Sherlock had wanted to go observe Molly’s Yule celebrations. Since Sherlock had (involuntarily) become a part of the Yarder’s Christmas event, he had grudgingly cancelled his appointment with Molly who had not appeared to be surprised at all. Somehow, Sherlock felt bad for her. Surely that had something to do with that inevitable Christmas spirit everyone was talking about.

Thus Sherlock was stuck at what passed for a Christmas party at the Yard. Mostly it seemed to involve a lot of food and drinks and - as a consequence - people who had obviously enjoyed too much of both bursting into spontaneous renderings of only remotely recognisable Christmas carols. John had been invited by Lestrade, too, (although maybe 'invited' was the wrong word since the Inspector had more or less begged him to come and keep an eye on Sherlock) and he apparently enjoyed this party, judging by the amount of food he consumed and the merry conversations he had with people previously unknown to him. Even though Sherlock had protested loudly against having John as a baby sitter, now that John was ignoring him, he felt a bit neglected. Moreover, nobody had given him his secret Santa gift yet whereas he had delivered his own right upon arrival. Thinking about it, he had seen no one else deliver or receive any gifts at all. How strange.

“So, Sherlock, have you already figured out the name problem?” Lestrade, who for some reason Sherlock did not even want to try to deduce was wearing a red hat with reindeer ears strapped to it, interrupted his thoughts and grinned at him with an excessive happiness most likely induced by the consumption of a non-negligible amount of alcohol. Sherlock frowned and pretended to be too interested in his punch to answer. Unfortunately, this did not work out as intended, as the punch was horrible (just as he had guessed from its vaguely purple colour) and his behaviour only reinforced Lestrade’s interest in him (as he had not guessed correctly). He gave Sherlock a jovial pat on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, nobody gets everything right.”

“I do.” Sherlock murmured through gritted teeth. “Eventually. Except for this – this ludicrous game!”

Lestrade winked at him clumsily and one of his reindeer ears winked with him. “Too bad you didn’t get your present then, Sherlock. I thought about it for such a long time and then decided you would prefer some kind of puzzle over any physical present. And obviously the answer could not be as simple as a single name.”

He chuckled. Sherlock stared at him for what felt like eternity, his mind rattling with all the possible consequences of what Lestrade had just told him. There had been a game inside the game, a mind game for him. And the answer wasn’t a single name... Combined with the fact that he had seen no one except for himself giving any presents this evening, this could only mean - Sherlock turned around sharply, leaving Lestrade to his punch and dragging a bewildered John into the hallway to inquire in an offended voice: „So they all had my name?“

“How could you not know this, Sherlock?” John who had quickly recovered from his surprise – this being Sherlock after all - tried to suppress a grin, but failed. “You always figure out everything.”

“And how could you know all the time and not tell me?” Sherlock had always thought he could at least trust John, if not Lestrade! But no, they had maliciously contrived a scheme designed to – well, if he was honest, designed to entertain him. His thoughts paused for a moment to appreciate the fact that someone had actually cared about what to give him for Christmas. Still, while that was a rather pleasant thought on its own, this situation was highly embarrassing. Sherlock briefly considered indulging in an evening-long sulking before he remembered something better. “Look, I don’t need to stay here with you all making fun of me. In fact, I do have other friends. I am off to Molly’s to celebrate the winter solstice with her.”

And off he went, leaving a speechless John and a stunned New Scotland Yard behind. After a short moment of confusion, the whole party gave a collective shrug and decided to simply continue the Christmas party without Sherlock. Probably that would be more fun for them anyway. Afterwards lots of stories would be told – of John’s and Lestrade’s memorable duet of Dominick the Donkey, of how Sally had beaten everyone at the Scotland Yard board game and of the curious case of the first missing and then heroically retrieved punch bowl. No stories would be told about Sherlock’s and Molly’s Yule celebrations, but Sherlock had come home the next morning with a smile, smelling of Nordic gods and mistletoe.