How My Neighbor Stole Christmas

They thought they were so smart; they thought they were slick.

But Cole thought up a reply, and he thought it up real quick.

Dignity and merit were tossed out the window.

He’s a man seeking revenge, our dear Daddy Snow.

This is what a high feels like.

This effervescent, light, practically airless feeling pulsing through my veins as I levitate out of bed, toe on my slippers, mock-curtsy to that bitch doll Samantha, and then head down the creaky stairs, the smell of coffee leading the way.

Wow.

Just wow.

I can’t believe we won last night.

I mean, I can.

Between the drink, the presentation, and Aunt Cindy’s superb acting, it was hard to say we didn’t have it in the bag.

And the look on Cole’s face.

Chef’s kiss.Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

Priceless.

I truly have never felt better. I’ve never felt more into anything in my entire life, and now, the bar has been set. I’m in game-plan mode now. We have a launch point, and we have to keep climbing.

I head toward the dining room, where coffee has been poured and oatmeal has been served.

“What’s this?” I ask Aunt Cindy and Taran, who are both sitting at the table.

“I wanted to make you my famous oatmeal for a job well done last night,” Aunt Cindy says.

I take a seat next to Taran and grab the milk for my coffee. “Aunt Cindy, I don’t think you should be cooking in your condition.”

“That’s what I told her,” Taran says. “It’s why I’m the one who made it while she snapped at me—”

“Excuse me?” Aunt Cindy says.

“I mean told,” Taran says with a cheeky grin. “Told me what to do.”

“Well, it looks delicious, thank you.” I pick up my spoon and stir my coffee when I notice that they’re both staring at me. I look between the two of them. “What?”

“You seem…different,” Taran says.

“She does, doesn’t she?” Aunt Cindy says with a grin.

“Yes, quite different.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say as I place my napkin on my lap.

“You know, Aunt Cindy, I think…yeah, I think she liked winning last night.”

Aunt Cindy rests her chin in her hand as she gazes at me. “I think she did.”

“Well, who doesn’t like winning?” I ask as I drop a teaspoon of brown sugar in my oatmeal and give it a stir.

Raisins, chopped apples, and cinnamon. It’s creamy, it’s soft, it’s delicious.

“But I think you liked it a lot,” Taran says.

“It seems that way,” Aunt Cindy continues. “I think she liked it so much that she cried.”

“I did not cry,” I say with an annoyed roll of my eyes.

“It felt like she was going to cry,” Taran says.

“I could sense the emotions,” Aunt Cindy replies.

“The only thing I sensed was a victorious swift kick to the air in celebration as Cole stared at us, dumbfounded.” I bring my coffee to my lips and take a sip.

“Ah-ha!” Taran shouts, scaring the shit out of me and making me spill my coffee into my oatmeal.

“Jesus, Taran,” I say as I try to clean up the mess with my cloth napkin. I fail miserably, because cloth napkins provide zero absorption. “Why did you yell like that?”

“I didn’t yell,” she says. “I’m pointing out the obvious.”

“And what would that be?” I ask while I continue to clean up the mess.

“That you’re overjoyed about beating Cole last night, so much so that there’s color in your cheeks.”

“There’s color in my cheeks because it’s freezing here and my body is attempting to self-regulate,” I say.

“But also…because we beat Cole, right?” Aunt Cindy asks.

I look between Aunt Cindy and Taran, their expressions hinting at celebration. They clearly want me to say it’s because of Cole and, well…damn it…it is!

I smile. “Yeah, because we beat Cole.”

And then as one, we cheer.

We clasp our hands together, shake them in the air, and celebrate this one solid win.

We celebrate the concoction we made. And it was delicious, especially if you dipped one of those cookies into it. Yum.

We celebrate the dreary and sad expression on Cole’s face when he saw our win.

We celebrate it all.

Once we’re settled, I sit back and clear my throat. “Just because we won the first challenge doesn’t mean we can get cocky, though.” I dip my spoon into my mostly coffee-less oatmeal. “This is a great starting point. From here, we need to keep pushing forward, which means we need to go over the next competition.”

“I could not agree more,” Aunt Cindy says. “Taran, the board, please.”

“The board?” I ask.

Aunt Cindy nods while Taran walks over to the buffet table, which she’s decorated with one of Aunt Cindy’s many Christmas villages, and from behind, slides out a piece of cardboard with a towel draped over it and props it on top of the buffet and against the wall.

“Shall I unveil it?” Taran asks Aunt Cindy.

“You shall.”

What the…

Taran flips the towel over the cardboard, revealing an intricate display of the competitors and the competitions, strings stretched all over like a spider’s web, connecting people to illustrated Christmas staples such as a tree, a candy cane, and the dreaded fruitcake.

“What is this?” I ask. “And when did you make it?”

“It’s my board that I adjust every year,” Aunt Cindy says. “It helps me keep track of who’s involved, what competition we’re gearing up for, who the judges are, and who is in the lead.” She gestures to Taran. “Can you grab the binder as well?”

“It’s right here,” Taran says as she grabs a binder from the buffet and brings it over to Aunt Cindy. When on earth have they talked about this without me? Because I haven’t really left their sides.

Well, I guess there was that nap I took the other day.

And that other nap before dinner because shivering all day takes it out of me.

Oh…and I can’t forget about the two hours I spent sitting in front of the fire where I…happened to fall asleep as well.

So, yeah, I guess they’ve had some time to plan without me.

“Ah, yes,” Aunt Cindy says as she refers to her binder and then back to the board. “Next we have the recycling—well, upcycling—portion of the competition.”

“And what is that, exactly?” I ask her. “Are we supposed to see who can gather the most products and recycle them?”

“No.” Aunt Cindy chuckles. “This is a competition put on by Sherry Conrad.”

“Who’s she?” I ask.

“Sherry is the owner of Antlers Antiques.”

“Oh, okay. So what does she have to do with the competition?”

“Sherry’s our local environmentalist. She’s the one who holds all the proprietors to a high standard of sustainability. When our neighboring town, Vail, came out with their Mountain IDEAL—their sustainability standard—Sherry brought the idea to Bob Krampus to adopt, and he welcomed it with open arms, as long as she was the one who headed it up. So, she helped all the proprietors turn over a green leaf, if you will. We’ve done away with single-use plastic as much as we can—especially at our restaurants—we’ve installed solar panels, and we’ve opened up a section of our town parking to allow electric vehicle charging, which in return has made us a larger destination because travelers will charge and shop here in Kringle. She’s done amazing things for our town, so Bob Krampus thought it would only be right to have a competition in honor of the work she’s done.”

“That’s actually kind of amazing. I had no idea, but it explains why plant-based cutlery is offered for all takeout,” I say.

“Exactly, so when they were coming up with a competition, they wanted to make it into an upcycling challenge. Contestants are supposed to create a live-action scene from one of their favorite Christmas movies and do it by using things that can be recycled, or by upcycling old items to give them a different purpose. The person who depicts the best scene and uses the materials in the best way wins.”

“Okay. A bit more of a challenge. We’re going to have to be creative, which I’m very good at,” I say. “And Taran can help execute, with her anal retentiveness to make it perfect.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Taran says as she scoops a spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth.

“What scene did you do last year?”

“I’m glad you asked,” Aunt Cindy says. “Because I won this competition last year.”

“Really?”

Aunt Cindy nods, and a large grin spreads across her lips. “I recreated the scene from Meet Me in St. Louis, where Judy Garland is singing ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.’ I styled my hair to look like hers, found some clothes from Antlers Antiques that represented the era, shoes and all, and then took a cardboard box, made it look like a window, and sat down, looking through the window like Judy in the movie and lip-synching the song. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place.”

I press my hand to my heart. “Aunt Cindy, that’s…that’s beautiful.”

“Thank you.” She smiles. “Now, I think we can achieve the same visceral reaction with you, but I think I should be involved. I say we reenact the same scene as last year, recycle the window, the outfit—showing Sherry that I didn’t just dispose of the scene from the year before. This way, we’re demonstrating the highest of all recycling by reusing what we’ve already created—but this time, you sing to me through the window while I slouch in my wheelchair like I’m knocking on death’s door.”

I hold my arm out and point to the goose bumps there. “Chills. Literal chills.”

“I can make your cheeks look gaunt too,” Taran says. “We can work the makeup in our favor.”

Aunt Cindy smirks. “And this is why I love you two.”

Proud of ourselves, we all dig into the oatmeal, knowing full well this competition is ours to take. And for the first time in a long time, I feel like our family is coming together again after a hiatus. A hiatus from me.

A stupid hiatus that I already regret, because this…this cohesiveness, this is what Christmas is all about.

That and winning!

Cole

“You know, unless you have binoculars, I don’t think you’re going to see anything,” Max says as he comes up behind me.

I snap the blinds shut and move away from my window, trying to put the woman next door out of my mind. “Last night was bullshit. We should have won.”

“Well, maybe if you’d listened to me about the chest hair, we could have won, but you were too much of a prude to puff it out.”

“First of all, my chest hair is trimmed. Even if I wanted to ‘puff it out’ as you like to say, I wouldn’t have been able to. And secondly, we were going to win on dignity and merit.”

“Yes, and look how far that got you. You saw them last night, Cole. They came to play. Cindy put on the performance of her life. I genuinely thought she was taking her final breaths last night, and so did Thachary and Frank.”

“Yeah, and did you see her pop out of her wheelchair like a freaking spring flower? The woman broke her hip and yet was able to awaken from a near-catatonic state in seconds.”

“It was startling. I gasped when I witnessed her rise, like an erection sprung right from a pair of tighty-whities.” I grimace at my friend, not liking that analogy. He continues, “But you know Frank and Thachary. They love their grandmas, and, well, the girls played toward their weakness, which got me thinking…” Max moves around my living room and takes a seat on the couch, pulling the suitcase he brought with him over to the coffee table. “I think we need to be more strategic about our approach.”

I fold my arms across my chest. “And what exactly do you mean by that?”

“We need to start focusing on not just the competition, but the judges.” Max opens his suitcase, flops open the top, and lifts out a large, folded piece of poster board, revealing a picture of every judge with a list of what seem to be personality traits underneath. “This is a comprehensive guide to every judge, what they’re judging, and what they like and dislike. I scoured their social media profiles last night, stole their most unflattering pictures, printed them, and wrote down everything I know about them.”

“Why the most unflattering picture?”

He looks at me as if I’m an idiot. “Uh, so you’re not intimidated, obviously.”

“Oh, yeah…that checks out.” I take a seat next to him and settle into the lumpy couch from my childhood that I’ve never replaced.

Actually, not a single thing in this house has been moved or shifted since I lost my parents. My childhood bedroom remains mine, the holly berry dishes my mom would pull out on Christmas Eve have accumulated dust on the shelves, and not a square inch of this house has seen any sort of Christmas spirit in a decade. I rarely sit in this room, so I haven’t really noticed how bereft it is, the way it seems to long for…what used to be.

Max smoothes his hand over the couch’s wrinkles. “The key to winning this competition is not how many ways you can say Season’s Greetings in the Myrrh-cantile, but how you can edge out the competition with your knowledge of the judges.” He takes out a pointer from his suitcase and slaps it down on a picture of Sherry Conrad getting licked in the face by her dog. Her face is crinkled, one of her fake eyelashes is dangling off her eyelid, and her lipstick is smeared across her cheek. Yeah, not the most flattering. “Now, this is our judge for the Upcycle Christmas competition.”

“This is the live-action one, right?” I ask.

He nods. “Yes, meaning you’re going to have to pose in some sort of Christmas scene while we attack the town with a strategic, perfectly constructed sight to behold.”

Don’t like the sound of that.

He takes out a piece of folded paper and turns away from me, keeping it hidden from view. “Now, Cindy Louis won this round last year, and she killed it. She dressed up as Judy Garland and lip-synched ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.’ Everyone cried—it was an ordeal.”

“I think I remember hearing about it,” I say.

“So, they’re going to attack hard since Cindy is the reigning champion.”

“Yeah, I could see them working the crowd with the old lady cadaver again.”

“We need to keep in mind that they’re going to use Cindy in every competition. My mom was even telling me that she overheard Nina Dirk talking to Martha about the status of Cindy’s hip and how they’re worried it might be her last Christmas.”

“Damn it,” I mutter as I drag my hand over my face. “But from the celebration last night, I assume she has a lot more Christmases left in her.”

“Agreed, which means we have to remain educated about our judges, stay on our toes, and be sneaky about this. If they’re going to use Cadaver Cindy, then we have to use our intelligence and inside information. I have my mom working the town. She’s been putting in s ome good words for you, and so is her secret friend, Kathleen, who works over at stall twelve.”

Stall twelve is one of fifteen craft stalls that surround the Tinsel Twirl just left of Ornament Park. They’re open year-round and are usually occupied by craft vendors who sell their homemade goods to those traveling through town. Bob and Sylvia Krampus are very particular as to what is sold in the stalls because they don’t want vendors competing with proprietors.

“Secret friend? Wait, is Kathleen the one who came in selling jellies and jams?” I ask.

Max nods. “The very one.”

“I thought your mom was feuding with her because she was selling the same jam that your mom has at Evergreen?”

“They’ve kept up the farce but have secretly formed an alliance. This is top secret, man, and you can’t say anything, but…” He glances over his shoulder, as if we’re not alone in my house. “In order to drive up sales between the two locations, they’ve created a rivalry to see whose jam is better, when in reality they don’t really care. So, out-of-towners will buy both jams and decide for themselves when they get home. Kind of like those competing cheesesteak places in Philly. The rivalry just drives up their sales as people try to form an opinion for themselves.”

“Oh shit.” I chuckle, impressed. “I had no idea.”

“No one does besides me, my dad, and my mom, and of course Kathleen, and the only reason I know is because I walked in on my mom and dad talking about it. But I’ve been sworn to secrecy. Last night after we lost, I told her I needed her help and, well, we devised a plan. She’ll have Kathleen talk about you around town, and people won’t suspect a thing because you’re aligned with my mom’s side of the jam schism.”

“That’s good.” I nod. “That’s very good.”

“You can thank my mom for that one. So, we have people buzzing a bout you around town, which is step number one. Step two, you have to continue showing yourself out in public and wishing people seasonal greetings, but I made you a list of different ways of saying it.”

He pulls a list out of his pocket and hands it to me.

I stare down and read each entry in my head.

I hope you have a delightful holiday season—yeah, that works.

Warm wishes to you and your family—that’s a good one.

Best wishes for a festive season—also another classic spin.

Sending holiday cheer to you and yours—a bit of a tongue-twister sentence for me.

May your holidays shine bright—not saying that.

Joyous Festivus…

I quirk my eyebrow and look up at Max. “Joyous Festivus?”

He smirks. “That was my favorite.”

“I’m not saying that.”

“I’m sure people would appreciate it if you did.”

“That’s great, but I’m not saying it. People will know I’m faking it.”

“You know…it’s okay for men to fake it every once in a while.” He nudges me with his elbow and waggles his brows.

I swat at him. “Enough with that shit.”

He chuckles. “Well, keep it in your back pocket if you ever need to gain a leg up. You can drop it like a holiday bomb. Joyous Festivus! People will fawn at your feet, and you might be crowned Christmas Kringle right there on the spot.”

I stare at my best friend. “You know, I think you’re getting way too into this.”

“I’m the proper amount of into this. Now stop distracting me—we have to talk about the Upcycle Christmas challenge.”

I lean back on the couch, knowing that even if I put up a fight, he’s not going to let me win, so I give in to this insanity. I will store away Joyous Festivus and only use it when absolutely necessary.

“Since we want to attack on all senses, I was thinking we act out a scene from The Grinch.”

I run my tongue over my teeth. “Let me guess, I’m the Grinch.”

“Unless you want to be Cindy-Lou Who. Up to you.” He grins.

“I think you know the answer to that.”

Chuckling, he continues, “Now, back to my research about Sherry. She’s a fan of dogs, one of her favorite movies is The Grinch, and most importantly, she’s a secret fan of Thunder from Down Under.”

Silence falls between us as I contemplate whether or not I need a new best friend, because I can see exactly where this is going.

“No,” I say.

He removes tissue paper from his suitcase, revealing a set of lederhosen, the same style that the Grinch wore in the Jim Carrey version. “Oh yes,” Max says.

“No,” I repeat.

He takes it out of the suitcase and stands up. “Oh, fuck yes.”

I look him up and down and uncross my arms. “No, Max. And that’s fucking final.”