Felis Novida ~Takanakuy Unboxed.

“A Reckoning of Ledgers, Calendars, and Human Folly—Balanced at Last.”

I wake to the sound of numbers arguing with knives out.

This happens every year, but this time the arithmetic is feral. December 25 barely clears the horizon before the netizens storm in chanting “twenty-five slash twenty-five slash twenty-five” like they’ve discovered a new continent hiding behind a calendar. They wave screenshots. They shout certainty. They smell faintly of caffeine and triumph. I look down at myself, pat my robes, count the months like a priest fingering rosary beads. Twelve. Still twelve. December remains stubbornly twelfth, unimpressed by viral enthusiasm.

I am the Spirit of Christmas, not the Spirit of Remedial Math, but even I know when a joke has forgotten it’s a joke.

They are not wicked. They are worse: sincere. Sincerity fuels confusion the way kerosene fuels fire. They want pattern. They want meaning. They want the pleasure of having noticed something others missed. Twelve slash twenty-five slash twenty-five really is lovely—clean, mirrored, smug. But “twenty-five slash twenty-five slash twenty-five” is a bar trick performed with great confidence and no deck of cards. And still it spreads, because nothing travels faster than a half-true revelation with a good rhythm.

I feel the date strain under the weight of attention. December 25 has always been crowded, but today it buckles. Forces pull from every direction. The west tugs with apples and equations. The east pulls with speeches and borders. Governance clears its throat. Ritual cracks its knuckles. Algorithms foam at the mouth. Everyone wants custody of the twenty-fifth. Everyone insists their gravity is the real one.

That is when I hear the cough.

Not polite. Not loud. Surgical.

“Act I,” mutters Ebenezer Scrooge from the air beside my ear, “Numerical Delusion.”

He never enters properly. He materializes like guilt. One moment the space is empty; the next it smells faintly of ledgers and regret.

“They think,” I say aloud, because silence has never saved me, “that if they chant it long enough, the calendar will blink.”

Scrooge snorts. “If chanting fixed accounts, I’d have been generous sooner.”

The pressure builds. The day starts to hum like a transformer. That is when Newton arrives—late, distracted, arguing with light as if it owes him money. He insists, briskly, that dates depend on systems, that calendars are human prosthetics strapped onto indifferent time. He mentions plagues, isolation, mistakes in recordkeeping. He drops an apple, on purpose this time, and watches it roll with predatory satisfaction.

Then Jinnah arrives, and the room rearranges itself around him. December 25 straightens. Arguments lower their voices. He speaks of unity and fracture in the same breath, and neither word flinches. He understands force that does not need to shout. Newton looks at him with the wary respect of a man meeting a rival equation.

“Act II,” Scrooge whispers, unable to help himself, “Competing Gravities.”

The arguments metastasize. Governance demands optics. Optics demand fairness. Fairness demands airtime. Airtime demands outrage. Outrage collapses under livestreams explaining, with charts, why December has secretly been harboring twenty-five months like an illegal sublet. An astrologer declares it auspicious. A numerologist declares it inevitable. A social media manager schedules content through the heat death of the universe.

The day begins to sweat.

I do what I always do when abstraction turns cruel.

I call for Takanakuy.

Before anyone panics—because someone always does—let me explain. Takanakuy is a Quechua tradition from the Peruvian Andes, and no, it is not “chaos” or “barbarism” or whatever word people reach for when they encounter conflict handled without passive aggression. It is a structured, communal ritual where grievances are settled through consensual, rule-bound fighting, followed by reconciliation. You fight, you finish, you hug, you drink, you move on. No subtweeting. No year-long grudges. No podcasts.

Honestly, it is astonishing how many advanced civilizations never invented this.

The ring forms immediately, because ritual outruns discourse every time. Grievances step forward with gloves on. Algorithms square up against historians. Meme accounts bounce on their toes opposite archivists who haven’t smiled since microfilm. Newton volunteers to officiate, then withdraws when he realizes neutrality requires physical contact. Jinnah folds his coat with ceremonial care and nods once. Scrooge grips his hat like a talisman.

“Act III,” Scrooge murmurs, reverent now, “Conflict, Properly Vented.”

The bell rings. Bodies move. Motion meets resistance. Resistance learns its limits. No one fights to annihilate; they fight to discharge. That is the rule. Energy in, energy out. Old grudges bruise and soften. Bad arguments crack and leak. The calendar takes a punch and admits it is rigid because it fears chaos. The meme stumbles, laughs, admits it forgot to wink. Even the astrologer concedes that Capricorn does not, in fact, own the sky.

When it ends, everyone hugs with the exhausted sincerity of people who have finally said the ugly thing out loud. Someone cries. Someone laughs too hard. Someone deletes a draft thread.

I feel the weight lift. So does the date.

Someone asks who won. Who gets the star. Who gets to be the Spirit of Christmas going forward. I laugh—a sound like bells remembering why they exist. There is no single winner. That is the trick nobody wants to monetize. The star does not crown; it reflects. It shows you what you bring to it.

Scrooge exhales, satisfied despite himself. “Final Act,” he says softly, “A Balanced Ledger.”

Dawn leans toward the future. December 25 loosens its shoulders. Newton picks up his apple and finally eats it, juice on his cuff. Jinnah raises a cup. Books open in quiet rooms. Wrestlers bow. The numbers slide back into place, still playful, less violent. Twelve remains twelve. Twenty-five remains twenty-five. The year winks like it knows it got away with something.

I remain what I have always been: a beacon, not a border. Hope does not require exclusivity. Joy does not demand a monopoly. Peace, when allowed to sweat out its toxins, returns sharper, cleaner, and less interested in trending.

Felis novida, I murmur—new happiness, poorly conjugated, sincerely earned.

For once, December 25 sleeps without grinding its teeth, confident it can hold multitudes without tearing itself apart.

† Felis Nivida is, according to no reputable Latin scholar, loosely translated as “new happiness,” “renewed joy,” or “the cat has learned nothing but feels better about it.” The phrase appears in no classical text, marginally resembles good grammar, and survives here solely on intention, tradition, and seasonal forgiveness—much like Christmas itself.