Don’t you love Christmas? What, you don’t? A lot of us have a love-hate relationship with the holidays: love, because it is supposed to be a great time of celebration with family and friends; hate, because it is often filled with stress over expectations and sadness that things aren’t the way they should be.
With all these conflicting emotions, there is plenty of room for conflict in storytelling (Hallmark and Lifetime have created a genre around that). However, there are many other more mundane conflicts that can coincide with the holidays (e.g. being in jail, war, sickness, alien attack, and your water being shut off).
Story Prompt: December 15, 2025
Write a story about the Christmas holidays where the conflict is something different from a normal holiday story.
By the way, movies like Home Alone and Die Hard may be Christmas movies but they are far enough outside the normal that you can consider home invasion and hostage situations as okay for this prompt. 🙂
If you write a story with this prompt, send me a link to your story on your own site, either in the comments or at info@greenwalledtreehouse.com. You can also submit your story here for a chance to have it published on the site next week.
Have a good week. Don’t be too stressed.
The Green-Walled Treehouse 
Conflict at Christmas. I’d start with all the must-dos rather than giving from the heart, when it feels good and right. I’d toss in all those living outdoors in this cold weather making it difficult to be festive. It’s different when you’re a kid, Santa still nestling in your thoughts. I’d love that again, even for an instant. Great graphic as usual. OMMMMM 🙂
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One thing about Christmas is that we want to be perfect which can accentuate all the ways it’s not, both for good and bad. No one should have to sleep outside, especially at Christmas.
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No. There should be a law.
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Hi David. Here’s mine: https://theelephantstrunk.org/2025/12/21/reparations/
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