notagarroter:

Further Thoughts on Holmesian Christmas

(Why Sherlock loves Christmas and Mycroft hates it)

I’ve been turning the observations from this post over in my mind now for a couple of days, and I realized I hadn’t done justice to this gif.

What we learn here is not merely that Sherlock loves Christmas.  It’s that he loves the idea of Christmas – Christmas as abstraction, Christmas as metaphor – but *actual* Christmas leaves him cold.  Why might this be?

What if it’s all because of Mycroft?

It seems reasonable to assume from what we know that there was a time when Sherlock got happy and excited for Christmas.  So what excited him?  My guess is that even as a kid, Sherlock would have been bored by toy trains and action figures.  But what if Mycroft, who has always had a soft spot for his baby brother, went out of his way to make sure that every Christmas Sherlock got a few dead frogs to dissect, human eyeballs, and whatever other creepy things might have interested young Sherlock?

This would neatly explain why Sherlock considers horrible things (serial suicides, treasonous encounters with blackmailers) delightful, and associates them with Christmas.

And if Mycroft let him believe it was actually Father Christmas bringing him the gifts?  Sherlock’s disillusionment with Christmas and some of his bitterness toward Mycroft might have been born the day he deduced the deception.   

And why would Mycroft, who hates Christmas, go to all this trouble?  I’m guessing Mycroft had to endure years of his parents giving him board games and ugly jumpers and other goldfish gifts.  As a result, he is generally unsentimental and dismissive about Christmas, *except* where Sherlock is concerned.  In this as in all things, Sherlock is his only weakness, and for Sherlock alone he is willing to indulge in a bit of sentimental nonsense – and so he made sure that Sherlock got the Christmases Mycroft had always wished for.

Source: notagarroter