The Case of the Festive Extraterrestrials

“The Case of the Festive Extraterrestrials”

It was a crisp December afternoon when Bob set out on a photo walk near the Danforth. The neighborhood had the usual holiday buzz—twinkling lights in windows, wreaths on doors, and inflatable Santas standing proudly on lawns. But as Bob turned a corner, he stopped mid-step, nearly dropping his camera.

There, on a patch of scraggly lawn, stood three little green beings.

Aliens.

Well, not real ones, Bob realized after a beat. These were wooden cutouts, painted pale green with oversized black eyes that stared blankly at him. But that wasn’t what made him linger. These aliens were decked out in Christmas cheer. One wore a slightly askew Santa hat. Another was accessorized with gold beads, garland, and tiny ornaments dangling off its limbs like alien bling. The third had gone all-out, a wreath around its neck like it had won a cosmic holiday pageant.

Bob tilted his head, puzzled. “What in the world…?” he muttered, camera in hand.

He crouched down, framing the scene. The aliens looked almost out of place amid the dry grass and dead leaves. But maybe that was the point. He snapped a photo—click—then another. The late afternoon light gave them an eerie glow, adding to their charm. Were they here to celebrate Christmas or observe it like intergalactic anthropologists? Did they even understand Earth traditions, or had they just copied the neighbors?

Bob imagined a family inside the house, watching him from behind the curtains. “Oh no, honey. We’ve attracted another one of those photographers,” he pictured them saying.

He chuckled to himself and stood back up, glancing around. Passersby seemed unfazed by the lawn aliens. A jogger ran by without so much as a glance. A dog walker paused when their pup barked at the wooden figures, then tugged the leash and kept going. It was as if Bob was the only one who found this odd.

He lingered a moment longer.

Why aliens? he wondered. A lawn this unique deserved answers. Was the homeowner a sci-fi fanatic? A believer in extraterrestrial holiday cheer? Or maybe, Bob thought, grinning to himself, it was a message. Maybe aliens do celebrate Christmas—and they’ve chosen Toronto as their starting point.

Bob took one last shot—a low angle for dramatic effect—then slung the camera over his shoulder. The aliens didn’t offer answers, but they gave him a story. As he walked away, his mind buzzed with captions for his blog.

"Santa’s new helpers have landed near the Danforth."