Day Twenty-Five: Wings for Everybody!

Wings! Wings! Everyone gets wings!

Penguin with golden wings
Uncle Nav with wings!

Here’s crazy ol’ Uncle Nav with his wings. They’re the golden wings that Pancake and Pep found in the magic chest. Uncle Nav is a big penguin — I don’t know what species of penguin Pancake et al are supposed to be, but if Uncle Nav is this large, then perhaps they are emperor penguins.

Another penguin with golden wings
Pancake with wings!

Here’s Pancake the Penguin with her golden wings! And still carrying that bowl of pancake batter.

And, of course, that’s the end of the adventure. They all get wings, according to the narrative, and then all the penguins in Waddleberg fly around, and it’s all stunning and magical and narrated by Morgan Freeman.

Cutaway box with a view of golden-winged penguins flying around
Behold! A scene of flying penguins!

If you embiggen the picture above, you’ll see a world of flying penguins, all with their golden wings. What joy.

And, finally, just to make sure everything’s fair and equal, here’s Pep the Lungfish with her golden wings as well:

Papercraft fish with golden wings
Pep gets wings too!

But flying lungfish aren’t as interesting as flying penguins, so let’s move on.

According to the narrative text that is printed on each of the little envelopes that these little papercraft critters come in, if you leave Pancake the Penguin with her wings on your Christmas tree, then on Christmas morning she might just take flight!

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and that you enjoyed following Pancake the Penguin and Pep the Lungfish through their adventures in the Ice Cream Forest, past the Mountains of Madness, and so on, as well as their defeat of the Ice Cream Fairy and Snow Monster Narlee. Have a happy new year, and all that jazz.

Day Twenty-Four: The Town Square

(This was written on Monday the 26th, days after the 24th.)

A papercraft snow penguin
They call this a snowguin! Complete with top hat!

It’s a day of jubilation in Waddleberg as Pancake the Penguin and her sister Pep the Lungfish arrive in the town square. No one believed it was possible. They all figured Old Penguin Nav was just bonkers, had gone mad from the sights he’d seen in his earlier quests, and that his stories of a Golden Key, of a magic chest, and wings were all delusions. But no! Pancake and Pep came zooming into town on the chest and spread wings to everyone who witnessed their grand arrival!

And then there’s a celebration in the center of town square, where the villager penguins all build a giant snow penguin (a “snowguin”, they all it). The honor of putting the top hat on top of the tree falls to Pancake and Pep because of their status as heroic adventurers.

This town has it going on!

But perhaps some lone, uninitiated traveler came across the penguin village of Waddleberg late at night when it was deserted, and saw the snowguin, and went quite mad. Remember the story of the albino giant penguin in the cave that Lovecraft wrote about? Perhaps the giant snowguin is the source of the legend.

Perhaps.

It’s a time for Holidailies in Waddleberg!


The entry for the twenty-fourth of the Episcopal Advent Calendar (Rest) reads, “The conventional wisdom is that new parents should rest when the baby is resting. Make sure you take some time out to
rest with Baby Jesus — and marvel in the wonder of a fresh, new, clean, shiny, tiny, precious start. Take a nap and thank God for the gift of Jesus and for peace at Christmas.”

Christmas Eve is traditionally rather busy in my family, as Jennifer and I go down to visit my folks and the house is full of people. I got to spend some time with my sisters, with my mom and dad, and with my four-year-old nephew, playing some sort of game with balls and cars, with rules that I didn’t understand but he did, and that’s all that matters. I rested very little. We had a lot of presents to wrap before leaving, and even though I actually read the entry in the morning (the church cross-posts the entries to Facebook), I didn’t take the time.

This calendar ends on the 24th, so this will be the last minor reflection on it. I suppose, though, that some secular holiday calendars — like the adventures of Pancake and Pep — and on the 25th. Tomorrow is Christmas, it’s the fourth Sunday of Advent, and a new adventure awaits.