It's a Christmas present. With robots in.
Title: A-Wassailing
Fandom: Transformers 2007 Movie
Characters: Lennox family, Witwicky family, Mikaela, Miles, Ironhide, Bumblebee, Tracks, Perceptor
Word Count: Short
Rating: G
Warnings: Festivity, robots, and a ladder.
Disclaimer: Transformers and all related indicia are property of Hasbro-Takara and Paramount Pictures; no copyright infringement is intended and no profit is made from this story. A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend (even if it's funnier than mine).
Author's Notes: Merry Christmas to dimarene, this is for her. Tracks hanging out with Mikaela is an idea I'll be making use of in another fic, but I like their chemistry; Perceptor and Miles as The Odd And Yet Totally Awesome Couple (not that kind of couple, this is not that kind of Christmas fic) is shamelessly burgled from Naturalized, a completely awesome work-in-progress that has me alternating between ded from laff and hanging on the edge of my seat. You should go read it after you read this. (I can rec in my author's notes if I wanna.) Does it count as shameless burgling if it's just the awesome chemistry the two characters seem to have that you're trying to burgle? Also, despite the title, no one sings.
Summary: Four vignettes, no excessive sentiment. The thing about Christmas is that it's not just a holiday, it's a cultural phenomenon-- and the Transformers have been dropped into a new culture.
O Tannenbaum
Annabelle napped in her playpen while Sarah and Will struggled with a box of steel and nylon components. They seemed to be assembling something like an artificial shrub, and Ironhide couldn't work out why they'd be doing something that... unusual.
Then again, he'd scanned a lot of things inside the Lennox house that he couldn't quite work out the purpose of (like the small missile-shaped motorized contraption in Sarah's nightstand that seemed to have no purpose beyond running very slightly off balance and eating C batteries) or that he'd figured out what they did but not why they were necessary (he understood that Will's electric shaver removed hair from his face better than a bladed razor, but he didn't understand, if hair was supposed to grow on his face, what the point of whacking it off could be).
The fake shrub was going up in the front window of the house, too, so Ironhide didn't even need to scan to see it. Eventually, it turned out not to be a fake shrub but a fake conifer, as Will settled the upper half of the thing (maybe it was an art piece?) into place. Sarah fussed over branches, fluffing them and pushing the wires this way and that, and Will ran an extension cord over to the thing.
It lit up.
Like a landing strip, like a pleasure district, hundreds of lights in magenta, yellow, blue, and green, and both the humans seemed delighted.
Humans enjoyed some weird slag.
Well, all right, he'd admit he found the pretend tree more aesthetically pleasing with the lights on, but otherwise it was just a mess of tubes and wires and shredded green nylon pretending to be organic.
Inside, Sarah set a box on the coffee table, and Ironhide scanned it, discovering it was full of blown-glass baubles. Made of very, very thin glass. Frankly, it looked kind of dangerous-- he wondered what they'd be doing with those, especially with Annabelle around. (Annabelle explored the world with her mouth. Anything she found in her hands, up to and including his steering wheel, was tested against tiny incisors. He was under the impression this was normal for fledgling humans, and suspected it had originated as a way to weed out the ones who put dangerous things in their mouths too often.)
But Will was heading out, still grinning, door banging shut behind him. "Wanna go for a drive, or should I take Sarah's car?" he asked, amiably.
"Where to?"
"I'm being sent out in search of plastic ornaments," Will said. "Sarah says we don't have enough unbreakable ones for the bottom of the tree even though we're putting baby gates around it."
"... Ornaments?"
"... For the Christmas tree?" Will filled in, as though it were supposed to mean something.
It at least gave the fake tree a designation-- Ironhide borrowed the Lennox's wireless connection and hit the search engines. "I'll go with you," Ironhide told him, "Provided you use the time to explain to me why you're putting up a safety hazard in your main living space."
"Lemme go tell Sarah this is gonna be a long trip."
Up On The Housetop
Standing very carefully out of view of the street, Bumblebee was glad indeed that Sam had decided the best thing to do was tell his parents about the Autobots and all-- Bumblebee would have been a nervous wreck if he'd had to sit in his alt mode and just watch Ron and Judy putting their lives at risk. Instead, he carefully held Ron and the (wooden, old) ladder steady as Ron positioned icicle lights along the eaves of the house, two strands thick. Bumblebee estimated that most of the nails Ron was using for the job had been in place for a minimum of eight years-- they were younger than the ladder, in fact.
He'd seen houses lighted for Christmas before, having spent three stellar cycles on Earth trying to track down Archibald Witwicky's descendents. He'd just assumed it was professionally done, by people who were trained, insured, licensed-- not by homeowners on aging ladders with no safety gear.
Oh, it would look nice when it was done-- he'd admired lighted houses before, and Ron was exacting in anything that had to do with his property-- but Bumblebee was glad that Sam had volunteered to do any number of inside chores instead of climb the ladder over and over.
"Okay, that's as far as I can reach," Ron admitted. "Lemme down so I can move the ladder a few feet, huh?"
"I could move you with it," Bumblebee offered. "It would be faster, and you wouldn't have to climb so much."
Ron hesitated. "You're sure that's safe?"
... Oh, let's see. He could let Ron climb down the ladder again, move the ladder another five feet or so, climb the (old, shaky) ladder again, then repeat the process when he got the lights up... or, he could just lift the whole thing, ladder and Ron and all, and set them down carefully, rather than having to risk catching Ron as he fell. "Very safe," Bumblebee finally said.
Lights went up. And more lights went up. From the front yard, Judy called, "Ron... where are the big orange extension cords?"
"You don't want the orange ones, Judy, you want the green ones! The orange ones aren't meant to stay outside overnight, it's a safety thing!"
"... Then where are the big green extension cords, Ron?" Judy corrected, and Bumblebee stifled amusement at her tone.
"In the garage, in the Home Depot bag!"
Judy voiced Bumblebee's words before he could-- "The Home Depot bag? Ron, there are like sixty Home Depot bags in the garage!"
"Well, that's where they are!"
Bumblebee listened to Judy's footfalls as she crossed to the kitchen door. "Sam, come help me in the garage for a minute!"
"I was just gonna start, uh, vacuuming--" Sure he was.
"Then I've just rescued you, come on." Sam thumped down the stairs. Judy didn't wait for him, heading for the garage herself, though she paused to look up at Bumblebee and Ron first. "... Why don't you just hold him up there?" she asked. "It'd be easier than using that old ladder, wouldn't it?"
"Judy, I'm not gonna ask the guy to hold me, for crying out loud."
"I'm just saying. That ladder's older than Sam is, and Bumblebee is definitely tall enough--"
"Just go get your cords, Judy."
Judy shrugged and rolled her eyes a bit, a gesture that reminded Bumblebee of Ratchet. "If he falls off that ladder, it's his own fault," she told Bumblebee as Sam came out of the kitchen, sparing a friendly thump to Bumblebee's leg as he passed by.
"What're we doing in the garage?" Sam asked.
Mother and son wandered off, and Bumblebee had to move Ron and the ladder again, though Ron was now muttering about his wife-- it sounded mostly fond, though, so Bumblebee didn't worry about it. He was surprised to receive a text message from Sam-- what could Sam want to say he couldn't come outside and say-- or more likely for the Witwicky household, just holler from where he was?
mom sez ok by her if u back over the ladder sometime, b
Amused, Bumblebee sent back He'd know it was me. Also, your grammar is terrible. Don't you go to school for this?
A moment later, Sam replied keys r slag tiny, and Bumblebee had to chuckle, which made Ron look back at him. "You say something?"
"Just thinking. I really could hold you up, though, at least until you're ready to do the front of the house. I wouldn't mind."
"It's the principle of the thing," Ron told him. "Holiday tradition-- you get up on the ladder, you put up the lights, you bang your thumb with the hammer or hit your head on the eaves-- it's all part of Christmas. Worth it, in the end."
"You have some unusual traditions, Ron."
"You should meet my sister. She's in theatre."
O Holy Night
Tracks had listened to passable human singing (not good, and certainly not like what he was familiar with, but passable), to a story so full of biological and astronomical improbabilities that it would have bordered on the extreme had it not all been chalked up to miracles (which meant, in his understanding, that a deity had decided to do the impossible for the sake of parable, prophesy, or proselytizing), and to a ritual blessing that included symbolic cannibalism.
And then he'd taken Mikaela and her grandmother home.
Once the grandmother was asleep, he called Mikaela's mobile phone-- she didn't answer, merely tossed her coat back on and came out to see him. "Wanna go for a drive?"
"It's late," Tracks reminded her, but she only shrugged.
"You'd take over if I got too tired, right?" And it was right, so he opened his door and welcomed her in. They rolled through Tranquility's streets rather slowly, both admiring lights and decorations left on despite how late it was. It was wasteful and environmentally unsound... but it was pretty, in a simple way. "So I bet you're kind of confused," Mikaela said after the cabin had warmed up again.
"... I certainly am now. What would I be confused about?"
"Midnight Mass." So she knew he'd watched-- well, there wasn't much of interest to be found in a parking lot or a driveway, really.
"Only about one aspect." Tracks wasn't dense or uncultured-- he understood that religion wasn't a matter of logic but a matter of faith, of what you had always believed or what you had found to believe in. That humans had it didn't surprise him; that what they believed differed wildly from most Cybertronian religions surprised him even less. (It surprised him a bit how many religions there were, but when he thought about how quickly humans lived and how few people a human could hope to meet in such a lifespan, it wasn't so surprising after all. They were all the same species and yet had language barriers that they couldn't get through.)
"Yeah?"
"Why did you go with your grandmother? You've told me before you don't believe as she does, and since September," when he'd crash-landed, when they'd hit it off so well that it was only natural to volunteer to be her transportation and most immediate guardian, "I didn't even know which church your grandmother attended."
"She likes me to go with her, sometimes."
"She'd like you to go with her every Sunday, I think."
"It's not my faith. But Christmas and Easter, I go with her. It makes her happy, and... even if I don't believe, it's... easier to want to believe on the holidays. Easier to feel it."
Easier. After the weeks (well, slightly more than a month) of buildup, of lights and trees and advertisements and gift-buying and improbable stories about reindeer and virgin birth and housebreakers who left gifts for the deserving, it was easier to have faith in it all.
Perhaps rather like it was easier to have hope in the face of your own extinction with the Prime's voice telling you that all things were possible on this little blue and green planet.
"I think I can understand that."
"Mind if I fiddle with the radio?" Mikaela asked. "Between the lights and the service and everything, I'm kinda in the mood-- and somebody's got to be playing Christmas music."
"Have at thee. Please avoid the easy listening station." They overplayed that horrifying French-Canadian woman-- perhaps to human ears she sounded appealing, but to Tracks... well, he'd rather listen to yodeling.
Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella
"It isn't the holiday itself I find unusual," Perceptor explained. "Given your species' brief lifespan and rapid changes, that religious festivals could mutate into something more secular and accessible, not to mention commercial as you developed more and more advanced manufacturing, is quite honestly a logical progression-- rather than stagnate or narrow its focus, the holiday has sprawled.
"What I'm having difficulty wrapping my processor around is the sheer convergence of early-winter holidays. I have done only a modicum of research on the subject, and as well as the ubiquitous Christmas, I've found Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, Chahārshanbe-Sūri, Dongzhi, Yule, and several concurrent festivals based on the Winter Solstice--"
"Percy?" Miles interrupted. "I kinda think if you'd slow down and back up, you've got the answer already."
"... I haven't even posed a question yet."
"Noticed," Miles agreed, grinning. Perceptor should have found it infuriating-- but the past several weeks' experience had quickly taught him that Miles only seemed lackadaisical and illogical, when in fact he possessed an unusual way of looking at the universe around him that allowed him to connect the hypothetical Point A with Point Z, and then go back and fill in Points B through Y with more ease than the average human... and, being honest with himself, the average transformer, as well. "But how long would it take you to find the question you're looking for?"
"Undetermined," Perceptor replied. "But it would give me a better sense of what answers I should be looking for."
"You're looking to find out why humanity, weird little diverse monkeys we are, have so much stuff crammed into the first couple days of winter, right?" Miles asked, then waved a hand. "In the Northern Hemisphere, anyway."
"Your species consists of apes, Miles, not monkeys. You lack tails."
"And it's a bummer. Tails'd be fun, you know?"
Perceptor laid a hand over his optics for a moment. Miles also had the habit of wandering off to an entirely different topic once he was satisfied with the current one. "May we return to the early-winter convergences?" he asked. "Particularly if you possess some knowledge I've yet to discover."
The boy laughed, but obliged. "It's all about the lights, Perce."
"The lights?" He paused, accessing the internet and skimming through several websites that seemed to bear out Miles's claim. "Hm. Diwali, Hannukah, Chahārshanbe-Sūri, and Yule do all seem to incorporate fires or candles in some way..."
"And Christmas," Miles put in, "has all kinds of lights. On the houses and on the trees-- Christmas tree lights used to be candles, even-- and then there's the star in the east, that's a pretty big light.
"They're the longest nights of the year, Perce, so we light 'em up. Humans can't see in the dark, so when the nights get long and the world gets cold, we've got to find ways to keep it warm and bright. Scare the monsters away, wake up the sun. It's all through fall and winter, too-- Chinese New Year in February and Halloween-- it's just strongest when it's darkest. Times are hard and things are dark, so we make a light and come together and pretty soon, the days get longer again."
"The days would get longer even if you didn't," Perceptor reasoned. "Astronomical phenomena operate completely independently of whether or not one creates a fire hazard in the living room."
"Yeah, but when the holidays got started, we didn't know that."
"It seems like a lot of trouble to go through for ancient superstitions." An awful lot of trouble-- very few humans seemed particularly ruled by their planet's timekeeping, barring the difference between night and day and the calendar year being based on a stellar cycle.
"Ancient superstitions that come with parties and feasting and presents, dude. Maybe not so many people care about the winter solstice anymore, but there's still enough dark out there that it's important to get together and make a light."
Perceptor considered the sociological, psychological, and philosophical implications of Miles's statement for a long moment, recalling passages he had given but little study towards, revolving around several key concepts of Transformer faiths.
Many promised light in the darkest hours.
"You make a startling amount of sense."
Perhaps some concepts were, given sensor compatibility, universal.
Fandom: Transformers 2007 Movie
Characters: Lennox family, Witwicky family, Mikaela, Miles, Ironhide, Bumblebee, Tracks, Perceptor
Word Count: Short
Rating: G
Warnings: Festivity, robots, and a ladder.
Disclaimer: Transformers and all related indicia are property of Hasbro-Takara and Paramount Pictures; no copyright infringement is intended and no profit is made from this story. A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend (even if it's funnier than mine).
Author's Notes: Merry Christmas to dimarene, this is for her. Tracks hanging out with Mikaela is an idea I'll be making use of in another fic, but I like their chemistry; Perceptor and Miles as The Odd And Yet Totally Awesome Couple (not that kind of couple, this is not that kind of Christmas fic) is shamelessly burgled from Naturalized, a completely awesome work-in-progress that has me alternating between ded from laff and hanging on the edge of my seat. You should go read it after you read this. (I can rec in my author's notes if I wanna.) Does it count as shameless burgling if it's just the awesome chemistry the two characters seem to have that you're trying to burgle? Also, despite the title, no one sings.
Summary: Four vignettes, no excessive sentiment. The thing about Christmas is that it's not just a holiday, it's a cultural phenomenon-- and the Transformers have been dropped into a new culture.
O Tannenbaum
Annabelle napped in her playpen while Sarah and Will struggled with a box of steel and nylon components. They seemed to be assembling something like an artificial shrub, and Ironhide couldn't work out why they'd be doing something that... unusual.
Then again, he'd scanned a lot of things inside the Lennox house that he couldn't quite work out the purpose of (like the small missile-shaped motorized contraption in Sarah's nightstand that seemed to have no purpose beyond running very slightly off balance and eating C batteries) or that he'd figured out what they did but not why they were necessary (he understood that Will's electric shaver removed hair from his face better than a bladed razor, but he didn't understand, if hair was supposed to grow on his face, what the point of whacking it off could be).
The fake shrub was going up in the front window of the house, too, so Ironhide didn't even need to scan to see it. Eventually, it turned out not to be a fake shrub but a fake conifer, as Will settled the upper half of the thing (maybe it was an art piece?) into place. Sarah fussed over branches, fluffing them and pushing the wires this way and that, and Will ran an extension cord over to the thing.
It lit up.
Like a landing strip, like a pleasure district, hundreds of lights in magenta, yellow, blue, and green, and both the humans seemed delighted.
Humans enjoyed some weird slag.
Well, all right, he'd admit he found the pretend tree more aesthetically pleasing with the lights on, but otherwise it was just a mess of tubes and wires and shredded green nylon pretending to be organic.
Inside, Sarah set a box on the coffee table, and Ironhide scanned it, discovering it was full of blown-glass baubles. Made of very, very thin glass. Frankly, it looked kind of dangerous-- he wondered what they'd be doing with those, especially with Annabelle around. (Annabelle explored the world with her mouth. Anything she found in her hands, up to and including his steering wheel, was tested against tiny incisors. He was under the impression this was normal for fledgling humans, and suspected it had originated as a way to weed out the ones who put dangerous things in their mouths too often.)
But Will was heading out, still grinning, door banging shut behind him. "Wanna go for a drive, or should I take Sarah's car?" he asked, amiably.
"Where to?"
"I'm being sent out in search of plastic ornaments," Will said. "Sarah says we don't have enough unbreakable ones for the bottom of the tree even though we're putting baby gates around it."
"... Ornaments?"
"... For the Christmas tree?" Will filled in, as though it were supposed to mean something.
It at least gave the fake tree a designation-- Ironhide borrowed the Lennox's wireless connection and hit the search engines. "I'll go with you," Ironhide told him, "Provided you use the time to explain to me why you're putting up a safety hazard in your main living space."
"Lemme go tell Sarah this is gonna be a long trip."
Up On The Housetop
Standing very carefully out of view of the street, Bumblebee was glad indeed that Sam had decided the best thing to do was tell his parents about the Autobots and all-- Bumblebee would have been a nervous wreck if he'd had to sit in his alt mode and just watch Ron and Judy putting their lives at risk. Instead, he carefully held Ron and the (wooden, old) ladder steady as Ron positioned icicle lights along the eaves of the house, two strands thick. Bumblebee estimated that most of the nails Ron was using for the job had been in place for a minimum of eight years-- they were younger than the ladder, in fact.
He'd seen houses lighted for Christmas before, having spent three stellar cycles on Earth trying to track down Archibald Witwicky's descendents. He'd just assumed it was professionally done, by people who were trained, insured, licensed-- not by homeowners on aging ladders with no safety gear.
Oh, it would look nice when it was done-- he'd admired lighted houses before, and Ron was exacting in anything that had to do with his property-- but Bumblebee was glad that Sam had volunteered to do any number of inside chores instead of climb the ladder over and over.
"Okay, that's as far as I can reach," Ron admitted. "Lemme down so I can move the ladder a few feet, huh?"
"I could move you with it," Bumblebee offered. "It would be faster, and you wouldn't have to climb so much."
Ron hesitated. "You're sure that's safe?"
... Oh, let's see. He could let Ron climb down the ladder again, move the ladder another five feet or so, climb the (old, shaky) ladder again, then repeat the process when he got the lights up... or, he could just lift the whole thing, ladder and Ron and all, and set them down carefully, rather than having to risk catching Ron as he fell. "Very safe," Bumblebee finally said.
Lights went up. And more lights went up. From the front yard, Judy called, "Ron... where are the big orange extension cords?"
"You don't want the orange ones, Judy, you want the green ones! The orange ones aren't meant to stay outside overnight, it's a safety thing!"
"... Then where are the big green extension cords, Ron?" Judy corrected, and Bumblebee stifled amusement at her tone.
"In the garage, in the Home Depot bag!"
Judy voiced Bumblebee's words before he could-- "The Home Depot bag? Ron, there are like sixty Home Depot bags in the garage!"
"Well, that's where they are!"
Bumblebee listened to Judy's footfalls as she crossed to the kitchen door. "Sam, come help me in the garage for a minute!"
"I was just gonna start, uh, vacuuming--" Sure he was.
"Then I've just rescued you, come on." Sam thumped down the stairs. Judy didn't wait for him, heading for the garage herself, though she paused to look up at Bumblebee and Ron first. "... Why don't you just hold him up there?" she asked. "It'd be easier than using that old ladder, wouldn't it?"
"Judy, I'm not gonna ask the guy to hold me, for crying out loud."
"I'm just saying. That ladder's older than Sam is, and Bumblebee is definitely tall enough--"
"Just go get your cords, Judy."
Judy shrugged and rolled her eyes a bit, a gesture that reminded Bumblebee of Ratchet. "If he falls off that ladder, it's his own fault," she told Bumblebee as Sam came out of the kitchen, sparing a friendly thump to Bumblebee's leg as he passed by.
"What're we doing in the garage?" Sam asked.
Mother and son wandered off, and Bumblebee had to move Ron and the ladder again, though Ron was now muttering about his wife-- it sounded mostly fond, though, so Bumblebee didn't worry about it. He was surprised to receive a text message from Sam-- what could Sam want to say he couldn't come outside and say-- or more likely for the Witwicky household, just holler from where he was?
mom sez ok by her if u back over the ladder sometime, b
Amused, Bumblebee sent back He'd know it was me. Also, your grammar is terrible. Don't you go to school for this?
A moment later, Sam replied keys r slag tiny, and Bumblebee had to chuckle, which made Ron look back at him. "You say something?"
"Just thinking. I really could hold you up, though, at least until you're ready to do the front of the house. I wouldn't mind."
"It's the principle of the thing," Ron told him. "Holiday tradition-- you get up on the ladder, you put up the lights, you bang your thumb with the hammer or hit your head on the eaves-- it's all part of Christmas. Worth it, in the end."
"You have some unusual traditions, Ron."
"You should meet my sister. She's in theatre."
O Holy Night
Tracks had listened to passable human singing (not good, and certainly not like what he was familiar with, but passable), to a story so full of biological and astronomical improbabilities that it would have bordered on the extreme had it not all been chalked up to miracles (which meant, in his understanding, that a deity had decided to do the impossible for the sake of parable, prophesy, or proselytizing), and to a ritual blessing that included symbolic cannibalism.
And then he'd taken Mikaela and her grandmother home.
Once the grandmother was asleep, he called Mikaela's mobile phone-- she didn't answer, merely tossed her coat back on and came out to see him. "Wanna go for a drive?"
"It's late," Tracks reminded her, but she only shrugged.
"You'd take over if I got too tired, right?" And it was right, so he opened his door and welcomed her in. They rolled through Tranquility's streets rather slowly, both admiring lights and decorations left on despite how late it was. It was wasteful and environmentally unsound... but it was pretty, in a simple way. "So I bet you're kind of confused," Mikaela said after the cabin had warmed up again.
"... I certainly am now. What would I be confused about?"
"Midnight Mass." So she knew he'd watched-- well, there wasn't much of interest to be found in a parking lot or a driveway, really.
"Only about one aspect." Tracks wasn't dense or uncultured-- he understood that religion wasn't a matter of logic but a matter of faith, of what you had always believed or what you had found to believe in. That humans had it didn't surprise him; that what they believed differed wildly from most Cybertronian religions surprised him even less. (It surprised him a bit how many religions there were, but when he thought about how quickly humans lived and how few people a human could hope to meet in such a lifespan, it wasn't so surprising after all. They were all the same species and yet had language barriers that they couldn't get through.)
"Yeah?"
"Why did you go with your grandmother? You've told me before you don't believe as she does, and since September," when he'd crash-landed, when they'd hit it off so well that it was only natural to volunteer to be her transportation and most immediate guardian, "I didn't even know which church your grandmother attended."
"She likes me to go with her, sometimes."
"She'd like you to go with her every Sunday, I think."
"It's not my faith. But Christmas and Easter, I go with her. It makes her happy, and... even if I don't believe, it's... easier to want to believe on the holidays. Easier to feel it."
Easier. After the weeks (well, slightly more than a month) of buildup, of lights and trees and advertisements and gift-buying and improbable stories about reindeer and virgin birth and housebreakers who left gifts for the deserving, it was easier to have faith in it all.
Perhaps rather like it was easier to have hope in the face of your own extinction with the Prime's voice telling you that all things were possible on this little blue and green planet.
"I think I can understand that."
"Mind if I fiddle with the radio?" Mikaela asked. "Between the lights and the service and everything, I'm kinda in the mood-- and somebody's got to be playing Christmas music."
"Have at thee. Please avoid the easy listening station." They overplayed that horrifying French-Canadian woman-- perhaps to human ears she sounded appealing, but to Tracks... well, he'd rather listen to yodeling.
Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella
"It isn't the holiday itself I find unusual," Perceptor explained. "Given your species' brief lifespan and rapid changes, that religious festivals could mutate into something more secular and accessible, not to mention commercial as you developed more and more advanced manufacturing, is quite honestly a logical progression-- rather than stagnate or narrow its focus, the holiday has sprawled.
"What I'm having difficulty wrapping my processor around is the sheer convergence of early-winter holidays. I have done only a modicum of research on the subject, and as well as the ubiquitous Christmas, I've found Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, Chahārshanbe-Sūri, Dongzhi, Yule, and several concurrent festivals based on the Winter Solstice--"
"Percy?" Miles interrupted. "I kinda think if you'd slow down and back up, you've got the answer already."
"... I haven't even posed a question yet."
"Noticed," Miles agreed, grinning. Perceptor should have found it infuriating-- but the past several weeks' experience had quickly taught him that Miles only seemed lackadaisical and illogical, when in fact he possessed an unusual way of looking at the universe around him that allowed him to connect the hypothetical Point A with Point Z, and then go back and fill in Points B through Y with more ease than the average human... and, being honest with himself, the average transformer, as well. "But how long would it take you to find the question you're looking for?"
"Undetermined," Perceptor replied. "But it would give me a better sense of what answers I should be looking for."
"You're looking to find out why humanity, weird little diverse monkeys we are, have so much stuff crammed into the first couple days of winter, right?" Miles asked, then waved a hand. "In the Northern Hemisphere, anyway."
"Your species consists of apes, Miles, not monkeys. You lack tails."
"And it's a bummer. Tails'd be fun, you know?"
Perceptor laid a hand over his optics for a moment. Miles also had the habit of wandering off to an entirely different topic once he was satisfied with the current one. "May we return to the early-winter convergences?" he asked. "Particularly if you possess some knowledge I've yet to discover."
The boy laughed, but obliged. "It's all about the lights, Perce."
"The lights?" He paused, accessing the internet and skimming through several websites that seemed to bear out Miles's claim. "Hm. Diwali, Hannukah, Chahārshanbe-Sūri, and Yule do all seem to incorporate fires or candles in some way..."
"And Christmas," Miles put in, "has all kinds of lights. On the houses and on the trees-- Christmas tree lights used to be candles, even-- and then there's the star in the east, that's a pretty big light.
"They're the longest nights of the year, Perce, so we light 'em up. Humans can't see in the dark, so when the nights get long and the world gets cold, we've got to find ways to keep it warm and bright. Scare the monsters away, wake up the sun. It's all through fall and winter, too-- Chinese New Year in February and Halloween-- it's just strongest when it's darkest. Times are hard and things are dark, so we make a light and come together and pretty soon, the days get longer again."
"The days would get longer even if you didn't," Perceptor reasoned. "Astronomical phenomena operate completely independently of whether or not one creates a fire hazard in the living room."
"Yeah, but when the holidays got started, we didn't know that."
"It seems like a lot of trouble to go through for ancient superstitions." An awful lot of trouble-- very few humans seemed particularly ruled by their planet's timekeeping, barring the difference between night and day and the calendar year being based on a stellar cycle.
"Ancient superstitions that come with parties and feasting and presents, dude. Maybe not so many people care about the winter solstice anymore, but there's still enough dark out there that it's important to get together and make a light."
Perceptor considered the sociological, psychological, and philosophical implications of Miles's statement for a long moment, recalling passages he had given but little study towards, revolving around several key concepts of Transformer faiths.
Many promised light in the darkest hours.
"You make a startling amount of sense."
Perhaps some concepts were, given sensor compatibility, universal.