Prompt Post 2!

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Phineas and Ferb

[radondoran]

In "Phineas and Ferb's Christmas Vacation," Doofenshmirtz has trouble hating Christmas because, quote, "There's no tragic holiday-related backstory in my past. Christmas was always fine growing up. It wasn't great, it wasn't horrible."

Prompt: Show me a Christmas during Heinz's childhood. In such a ludicrously traumatic family, how was it always okay? Did the Doofenshmirtzes celebrate Christmas more or less like an ordinary family? Did the four of them all treat each other decently on Christmas Day? Or does Doof just have a skewed sense of "fine"?

I'd like it if this wasn't all-out tragic: something heartwarming or bittersweet about a time in Heinz's childhood that wasn't horrible.

Re: Phineas and Ferb

[radondoran]

THIS foerver.

A Skewed Sense of Fine

[radondoran]

The first five or so Christmases of Heinz Doofenshmirtz’s life, he didn’t even know that there was a Christmas. Looking back, he supposed that there must have been decorations and traditional folk songs, but mostly it was just another day when the neighbors acted weird and his parents remembered to feed him. He figured something was up after he took on the post of family Lawn Gnome, and they let him back in the house that Christmas night-at night! When all the nasty spirits were just falling over themselves to have a crack at an unguarded home! But they let him come inside, so he knew there was something different about the twenty-fifth of December

Re: A Skewed Sense of Fine

[radondoran]

Plus, nobody was paying attention to him, so on days when he had spent the night guarding the house, he could sleep an hour or two in the pews

Re: A Skewed Sense of Fine

[radondoran]

Aaaaah, I love this. It's funny and heartbreaking and adorable all at the same time. All the Gimmelshtumpian local color is great, and I love the idea that since Heinz's childhood was just completely, ridiculously terrible all the time, even the smallest remittance was something.

Also, I love that Heinz once got mary-janes to match his dresses; and I love this line:

Heinz always liked going to church, because he sat with the rest of the family, and the building was wooden so it was warmer than home, and nobody threw things at him or called him Fraulein Doofenshmirtz because that would make them look bad in front of Herr God. Heinz figured Herr God must like him, for some reason, or it wouldn’t have been a problem.

Thank you for filling my prompt!

Re: A Skewed Sense of Fine

[radondoran]

You're so welcome! I've been eyeing it for over a month and I was finally like "I need to fill SOMEthing for the fill-a-thon." Obvious choice.

Thanks for thinking it up! <3