1. The family cat knocks over the Christmas tree and breaks all of your younger sister’s presents. Your parents scramble to make it up by giving her half of your presents. Your younger sister does not need a CHEM 1220 textbook.
  2. The Santa at your local mall throws up on the children. He wasn’t drunk, just desperately sick. The poor man needs money more than anything and now he’s losing his job. Just in time for the holidays.
  3. That house that always has the happy snowmen and prancing reindeer. The merry kitchen aglow with red and gold. It’s not until the firetruck’s siren brakes the silence that you realize this grease fire will put a damper on the Jones’ Christmas.
  4. Your nineteen-year-old best friend just realized that Santa wasn’t real. I’ll let you take a second to soak that in. He’s nineteen. He’s legally old enough to drive to the North Pole Mall Experience and apply to be Santa. He’s not quite old enough to get the job, and he’s probably too tall to be an elf. He’s probably just the right age to click the camera shutter as kids one to ten smile sweetly. And ten is probably a little on the old age.
  5. A small girl getting coal as a Christmas gift. He father is a miner and her mother is in the process of becoming coal. All she has is this bag of coal. She sees the coal under the imaginary tree and bursts into tears of pure joy. How could she be so lucky as to have this beautiful black coal.

You look down at the CHEM 1220 in your sister’s hands and realize, the holidays aren’t that bad after all.

–Hannah Wagner, Staff Member