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"While Mortals Sleep" is a short story first published in its original form as "Christmas Contest" in Farm Journal in December 1952. It was Vonnegut's only publication in that magazine. It was reprinted—renamed and in a different form—in the collection of the same name in 2011 and again in Complete Stories in 2017.[1] Its title derives from a line in the carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem" which features in the story.

Plot Summary[]

Fred Hackleman is a Christmas-hating editor of a city newspaper for ten years with no respect for "government, matrimony, business, patriotism, and just about any other important institution you could name." A reporter who's worked at the paper for three years is dragged in by Hackleman as his assistant for the Annual Christmas Outdoor Lighting Contest, held since 1938 except for the war years, in which households adorn their homes with colored lights and other Christmas decorations and the person with the highest electricity consumption wins. While originally planning to pawn to whole task off on the reporter, the paper's publisher orders Hackleman to participate. Although he quits for a day in protest, Hackleman returns and he and the reporter drive around evaluating all the entries to produce twenty for the committee to choose from on Christmas Eve. Hackleman can't stand Christmas music, and he sees the whole holiday as commercialized. He reveals to the reporter that he was raised in an extremely Christian household where he had to learn a new Bible verse every night as a child, nor did he miss a Sunday school session for ten years or else his father would beat him.

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A Nativity Scene

Arriving at a mansion with the feel of "sudden wealth," Hackleman recognizes the owner, J. Sprague Fleetwood, as the former numbers runner Leu "Mad Dog" Gribbon who murdered dozens of people but only went to prison for five years for not paying income tax. Gribbon turns on his Christmas display, a bombastic life-sized nativity scene with loudspeakers playing carols, animatronic livestock and shepherds, angels with mechanical wings, and an illuminated balloon in imitation of the star of Bethlehem. Assured he'll win the contest, Gribbon states he's made the display as "a public service." Despite using all the resources of the newspaper, Hackleman can't find any evidence of current criminality by Gribbon, who seems to have made enough by his early forties for a law-abiding retirement. The next morning the newspaper breaks the story that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph from Gribbon's nativity scene have been "kidnapped", animating the whole town to begin a search, with people coming to believe the family would be found on Christmas Eve.

Hackleman and the rest of the judging committee head to Gribbon's home on Christmas Eve, where he has replaced the stolen figures, planning to hand him the award. However, they can't bring themselves to do it. Hackleman says there was a last minute entry at the edge of town. Arriving, they are awed by the discovery the three figures gently illuminated in a rustic barn, before which they all kneel. The next morning the paper briefly reports that "Mr. Sprague Fleetwood" won the lighting competition, but most of the town has gathered at the barn. Wondering who stole the nativity figures, the reporter suggests going over them for fingerprints, a suggestion angrily shot down by Hackleman who calls it "sacrilege!" He then sends a photographer out to barn to get a picture of the crowd, reminding him that the figures are probably dusty from all the visitors and should be wiped down with a damp cloth before they're photographed.[2]

"Christmas Contest" Version[]

In the earlier published version, the plot and major characters remain the same, although there are several important differences in details. Hackleman's unpleasantness generally and especially toward Christmas are less developed in the introduction. Fleetwood is not the alias of a former gangster but instead a corrupt developer who has built Manor House Estates on a swamp where the homes he's sold are already in a state of collapse six months later. Learning that Hackleman was planning an unfavorable story about him, Fleetwood attempted to bribe him, a fact that was later placed in the story itself. Fleetwood then attempted to have Hackleman fired to no avail, deepening the animosity between the two. As in the collected version, Hackleman forces the narrator, a reporter at his newspaper, to assist him in the judging of the Christmas lights contest, the nature of which is mostly identical except Fleetwood's display is described somewhat less gaudily and without the balloon simulating the star of Bethlehem.

Having become frustrated at failing to unearth any criminal behavior on Fleetwood's part, Hackleman quotes Matthew 6:5 to himself ("And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the... corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men") and angrily leaves the office. The next morning the headline states that the nativity figures have been "stolen" rather than kidnapped. The denouement with Fleetwood and the barn with the nativity figures is essentially the same, although the discoverers do not kneel. Fleetwood's victory is consigned to an inside story while the discovery of the figures is on the front page. The police find Hackleman's fingerprints all over the figures but the reporter tells them Hackleman handled them to make sure they were really the ones stolen from Fleetwood. Hackleman, claiming he's going for a walk, grabs his coat but is seen by the reporter rushing to join the crowd entering the Christmas church service. The reporter grabs his own coat.[3]

Background[]

Despite being published in 1952, "Christmas Contest" was not included in any of the short story collections printed in Vonnegut's lifetime. In 1974, Vonnegut stated that professors Jerome Klinkowitz and John Somer had proposed publishing a collection of all of his uncollected works, presenting "an appallingly complete bibliography" that nonetheless lacked "three or four works of mine they know nothing about. Not even the ordeal of the veglia, said to be the most excruciating torture ever devised by Earthlings, could compel me to reveal where those three or four were published—and when."[4] Presumably this is one of these works since in his 1977 article "A Do-it-Yourself Kurt Vonnegut Anthology", Klinkowitz stated that "A Present for Big Nick" [sic] was "the only seasonal story Vonnegut ever wrote" indicating that he was unfamiliar with the original publication of "Christmas Contest".[5] The bibliography of his 1998 book Vonnegut in Fact: The Public Spokesmanship of Personal Fiction also does not mention this work.[6]

See Also[]

  1. Given that neither Vonnegut nor his estate republished the version printed in Farm Journal, the version from While Mortals Sleep rather than "Christmas Contest" is treated as the "official" version for this article.
  2. "While Mortals Sleep", Complete Stories, pp. 636-648.
  3. "Christmas Contest", Farm Journal, December 1952.
  4. Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons (Opinions), pp. xviii-xix.
  5. "A Do-It-Yourself Kurt Vonnegut Anthology", Jerome Klinkowitz, The North American Review, Vol. 262, No. 3 (Fall, 1977), pp. 83-85
  6. Vonnegut in Fact: The Public Spokesmanship of Personal Fiction, Jerome Klinkowitz, 1998, pp. 143-152.
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