Ice Age: Christmas Tails

A Mammoth Christmas

Authors Note

Welcome back to the Ice Age world dear readers! This will be the Christmas Special, A Mammoth Christmas. But of course, I couldn't just do that one and leave it at that! So in addition to the movie special, I will include my own Christmas fanfic after this one. It will be in the same book, so no need to look elsewhere 😉

A Mammoth Christmas will include all of the characters as they appear in the film and I will of course be including my OC, Sassy the wolf! (If you haven't read my other ice age stories I recommend doing so before reading these stories) And then my Christmas story will be set after Collision Course, so all of the characters will be based after Peaches and Jullian's wedding. Also, Sassy will be joined by her mate, Denali, (another OC of mine) and then Diego and Shira will have their three cubs that I added on at the end of Collision Course.

Disclaimer: All rights to Ice Age belong to Blue Sky Studios. Sassy, Denali, Rocky, Chase and Rose are my characters.

I hope everyone enjoys these stories as much as the other books! Have a very Merry Christmas and God bless you all this holiday season!

Sassy yawned as she walked through the snow covered forest with her best friend, Diego the saber tooth tiger. Anyone watching them would think they were insane. A wolf and a saber tooth? Friends? Not only friends but living with 2 mammoths, one baby mammoth, 2 crazy opossums and 1 stinky sloth. she sometimes questioned their own sanity. But she didn't question her family for the world. A scrat leaped out of the snow in front of them and went leaping after an acorn that was rolling away. Sassy looked up and saw Manny rolling his "Christmas rock" into the clearing.
"He's dragging that thing out again?" Diego asked.
"It would appear so." Sassy rolled her eyes and then smiled as she watched Peaches slide down the hill with her two uncles and engage in a rough house snow ball fight. She and Diego wandered closer just in time to see Manny pull Peaches off the rock cause she had kissed it and was stuck to the cold rock.
"Oh Christmas rock, oh Christmas rock! You're 30 tons of granite!" Manny sang out.
"You realize you're singing to a rock?" Diego questioned the male.
"It's a Christmas tradition. For the kids! Don't sabers have Christmas traditions?"
"Oh yeah! Every year my dad would bring home the biggest, fattest gazelle's and then we would all rip into their-,"
"Ahem!" Ellie halted Diego's words and tearing into a snow gazelle as a frightened Peaches trembled by her mother.
"O-our presents a-and then we'd play games with the gazelles and dance with them and not eat them. The end!" He grinned sheepishly and Sassy glared at the saber.
"Merry Christmas my mammals!!" Sid the sloth exclaimed, sliding up and draping his arm around Diego's broad shoulders in a brotherly gesture. "Wow that's some crazy rock." He said, getting so close he breathed on the huge granite boulder.
"Step away from the stone." Manny ordered, picking him up and placing him back.
"Why?"
"Because you'll break it."
"Sid can't break a rock." Ellie defended jokingly.
"Don't tempt him." Sassy and Diego said in unison, full expressions on their maws.
"Uncle Sid, we need this so that Santa can find us tonight!" Peaches said, stepping in front of Sid and wrapping her little trunk around the rock protectively.
"What this?" She nodded. "Pfff you need something bigger, taller, sparklyier! Something with pizzazz! Um...a tree!" Sid said, gesturing to a tall pine in the middle of the clearing.
"A Christmas tree? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?" Manny said.
"There's millions of trees out there Sid. How would anyone notice this one?" Diego asked.
"Well we could decorate it!" He clapped his paws together twice. "Crash! Eddie!" The two opossums giggled and the three set to work, gathering everything from earth worms to fish skeletons to live animals to stick, hang and impale on the branches. "And...viola!" Everyone ooohed and ahhhed at the decorated tree.
"It does look pretty good." Diego observed.
"I think it's a great idea." Sassy threw in, looking up at the sparkling tree. The brothers had just added icicles to the branches to make them glisten in the afternoon sunlight.
"Humph. It'll never catch on."
"It's beautiful!"
"Hmm...it needs a certain razzle dazzle on top. Something that says...Sid." He leaned back against a tree and a chunk of ice and snow stuck to his fur. He grunted and pulled away, only to have the ice stick to him in sort of a Star shape. He pulled it off his coat and climbed up the tree and placed it on top. "And just like that a tradition is born-whoa!" The tree tipped to the side with Sid's added weight and when he touched the ground and let go, the top went snapping back, sending the ice Star spiraling through the air, coming dangerously close to some mammals. Everyone ducked and screamed and it finally flew straight into Manny's Christmas rock and shattered. Everyone gasped. "Oh seriously what did you think was going to happen?" Sid asked casually, leaning against the rock. And just like that it cracked and crumbled into large pieces. "Oops." Sid slowly backed away from the now destroyed rock.
"Yup that says Sid all right." Diego drawled. Sassy braced for impact. She knew this was not going to end well, for anyone but most of all Sid. Manny picked up a chunk of the rock, looking at it forlornly as it crumbled in his trunk. He growled and turned to the sloth, slowly walking towards him. Sid blanched and backed up.
"Now now lets keep our heads. A-after all isn't it about the true spirit of Christmas?"
"You're about to be a Spirit of Christmas Sid!"
"Oh Manny! I'm so sorry!" Sid wailed, hugging Manny's trunk.
"You know what Sid, I'm the least of your worries!" Manny turned his trunk up, the sloth dangling upside down. "You gotta answer to Santa!"
"Santa?" Sid gulped. "You mean Santa Clause?" Manny dropped him, letting his sprawl flat on his stomach.
"He is never going to forgive this. You just got yourself on a...duh....Santa's Naughty List!" Manny finally said menacingly, hovering over Sid with a dark expression.
"Santa has a naughty list?" Peaches asked her father.
"Yeah, yeah and if you're not good, then he puts your name on it!"
"We're never good." Crash observed.
"Then why start now?" Eddie finished and kneed his brother in the gut.
"If your name is on it, you don't get Christmas." Manny said, glowering at Sid. Sid, Peaches and the twins gasped in horror. Manny walked away, leaving Sid to crumple to his knees and let out a long wail.
"Nooo! Why me!!! Besides the fact that it's my fault heh heh."
"The naughty list? Where'd you come up with that one?" Ellie asked.
"Relax. Sid's gullible but he's not that gullible. He knows this Santa stuff is just for kids."
"What!?" The two grown mammoths looked over in horror as they realized Peaches had overheard everything. "You don't believe in Santa?"
"Well I uh-,"
"Of Course he does! It's the magic of Christmas!" Ellie covered for her mate.
"If anyone deserves to be on the naughty list dad, it's you." Peaches huffed and stormed off.
"She sure told you."
"Well too bad. I'm a grown up, and grownups don't believe in the naughty list." A distinct wail from Sid begged to differ.
"Why am I on Santa's naughty list!?" He cried to Diego.
"My guess? He doesn't have a loser list." The Tiger snarked and moved away from the sloth, padding up after Sassy, who was walking through the woods nearby.
"That was harsh Diego." Sassy said sternly, glaring at him. Diego rolled his eyes and shrugged.
"We've called him worse."
"Correction. You and Manny have called him worse. I've never called him anything except stinky and an idiot and the idiot one was justified by the fact that he had stolen 3 dinosaur eggs." Diego opened his mouth to argue with her, but wisely snapped it shut again.
"So what do wolves do for Christmas?" Diego asked, changing the subject as they walked together. Sassy's ears drooped slightly at the ends but that was the only indication she gave that something was wrong. Until she spoke.
"I wouldn't know. My pack never had Christmas." Diego stopped, looking at the former alpha in disbelief.
"What? How is that possible? How can you not have Christmas?" Sassy shrugged.
"I was born in the spring and you already know I became alpha when I was only a little over half a year old. By the time winter came, my entire family was dead, and all I had was my pack. None of the elders of the pack ever told me about Christmas and for all I know they didn't even know what it was themselves." Sassy looked up at the blue sky, almost searching even though she knew what she sought wasn't visible yet. "We never had Christmas in the sense most mammals know it, but we did have something. Something not many would understand."
"Tell me." Diego urged. Sassy smiled, reminiscing on her pack and her memories of their winters.
"One night each year, the night that I now know is indeed, Christmas Eve, whether the moon was full, half or gone, the night was always clear, and the stars shown brighter than they ever had any other day of the year. But especially, one star in particular. The North Star. It always shown the biggest and the brightest. We didn't know why, but we were drawn to it and every year we went to the highest cliff nearby and the entire pack spent the night together under the star's glow. I considered following it one year, to see where it would take me. It just seemed to be calling to me. But, I couldn't just leave my pack like that." Sassy brought her head down and looked at Diego, who seemed almost too stunned to speak.
"I...um...gee I'm not sure why to say." He finally spoke. Sassy gave him a sad smile.
"It's alright Diego. No words are necessary." She nudged his head in a friendly gesture and kept walking to the clearing where Manny was trying to reassemble his Christmas rock. She and Diego laid down side by side and watched the mammoth work. Finally he looked at them.
"So? What do you think?" He asked. Sassy and Diego looked at the crumpled rock, the pieces propped up by sticks wedged in the cracks, looked at each other and then looked to Manny.
"Do you want the honest answer or the Christmas answer?" Sassy asked.
"Uh...Christmas answer?"
"It's gorgeous." Diego said, in the most heartfelt tone he could muster with how pitiful the rock looked. It shifted and the sticks snapped and the pieces fell in on each other once again.
"Manny!?" Ellie called in a tone that could only be one described as a distraught mother. "Have you seen Peaches? Sid, Crash and Eddie are missing too!"
"Last time I saw them they were trying to figure out how to get off Santa's naughty list." Diego put in, referring to right before he had joined Sassy in the woods. He had heard the 4 plotting but he hadn't put much attention to it. He now wished he had.
"What naughty list I made it up!!!"
"We need to find them fast. Diego, Sassy, can you pick up Sid's scent?" The two predators looked at each other in discomfort.
"We can but it makes my eyes burn." Diego said.
"Do it!!" The two parents ordered harshly and Diego and Sassy flinched.
"Alright alright." They put their noses to the air and sniffed and then retracted sharply, wincing.
"Ugh got it." Diego lamented. Sassy did her best to ignore the foul odor and focused on the other scents.
"Wait...I got Peaches, Crash and Eddie too. They all go in the same direction so it's logical they all four went together." A thought dawned on her and she grimaced. "How much you want to bet they're going to the North Pole to find Santa and get off the naughty list?" Diego looked at her and so did Manny and Ellie.
"It's entirely possible." Diego said, knowing Sassy was probably right. She was always right. They set off through the snow after the rest of their wayward herd.