Mrs. Budlong's Christmas Presents

Mrs. Budlong has transformed Christmas in her small town into a grotesque spectacle of acquisition. What begins as a holiday tradition has become her annual raid on her neighbors' wallets, each gift received a measure of her social dominion. She manipulates, wheedles, and schemes her way to a mountain of presents, while the townspeople engage in increasingly frantic competition to out-gift one another. The more absurd the exchange becomes, the more determined everyone seems to perpetuate it. But this year, the machinery threatens to jam. When Mrs. Budlong realizes she has received far more than she has given, panic sets in. What follows is a desperately hilarious scramble as she and her family race to manufacture reciprocity before Christmas morning. Hughes writes with a sharp eye for the ridiculous performative generosity of small-town America, and his satire cuts both ways: at the greedy matriarch and at the neighbors who enable her.