{"id":25511,"date":"2019-12-23T12:23:03","date_gmt":"2019-12-23T17:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/?p=25511"},"modified":"2026-07-29T12:31:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T16:31:19","slug":"the-quiet-of-christmas-by-psw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/?p=25511","title":{"rendered":"The Quiet of Christmas (by PSW)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><b>Bonanza<br \/>\n~*~*~ Advent Calendar ~*~*~<br \/>\n* Day 23\u00a0*<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Summary:\u00a0 The quiet of Christmas comes through loud and clear for one member of the family.<\/p>\n<p>Rating:\u00a0 G<br \/>\nWord Count:\u00a0 300<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>The Quiet of Christmas<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The night shimmered around him.<\/p>\n<p>Hoss leaned back against the barn door, breathing in the cold December air, letting the strains of music and laughter from the house wash into the background.\u00a0\u00a0Christmas at the Ponderosa was \u2026 well, it was something special.<\/p>\n<p>Always had been.<\/p>\n<p>He loved his home at any time of year, but there was somethin\u2019 about\u00a0<i>this<\/i>\u00a0night\u2014the celebration of the Christ child\u2019s birth, the memories of past Christmases, the scents of treats that came around only at this time of the year, the babble of different voices, the lights and sparkle.<\/p>\n<p>The silence.<\/p>\n<p>He didn\u2019t know if anyone else had ever noticed, but Christmas night had a stillness, a silence, that he had never known at any other time.\u00a0\u00a0It was as if \u2026 as if everything in nature was waitin\u2019 for the Christ child right along with them. The trees and rocks and wind and animals and moon and stars and everything else around them\u2014they were vibratin\u2019 with life, all holdin\u2019 their breath, right on the edge of \u2026 of laughin\u2019 for joy.\u00a0\u00a0Just on this one night.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes, he was actually surprised that he couldn\u2019t hear them out loud.<\/p>\n<p>Always, he was surprised that nobody else\u00a0<i>noticed<\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0At least, he\u2019d never seen any of the others lurkin\u2019 in a quiet corner outdoors on Christmas night, just \u2026 listenin\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>The music and voices\u00a0swelled, and Hoss knew it was time to go back inside. Hop Sing would be servin\u2019 dessert soon, and no way was he missin\u2019 that.\u00a0\u00a0He took another long breath, blew it out in a cloud of white steam, closed his eyes.\u00a0\u00a0The night shimmered around him, just on the edge of laughter.<\/p>\n<p>He couldn\u2019t \u2026\u00a0<i>quite<\/i>\u00a0\u2026 hear it.<\/p>\n<p>But his own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Link to the 2019 Advent Calendar &#8211; December 24:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/?p=25517\">Naughty or Nice by mumu74<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summary:\u00a0 The quiet of Christmas comes through loud and clear for one member of the family.<\/p>\n<p>Rating:\u00a0 G<br \/>\nWord Count:\u00a0 300<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10468,"featured_media":25241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-full-width-post.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[1062],"class_list":["post-25511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-challenges","tag-advent-calendar","wpcat-40-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/advent.jpg?fit=480%2C413&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10468"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}