When she pulls three boxes of multi-racial Santas and a four foot tree out of storage in October, Wally laughs. And he keeps laughing while she drapes garlands around the kitchen, hangs a wreath on every door in the house. “I’ve never had a real Christmas before! My mom gave me a pair of socks the first time we celebrated, and nothing else. Then she forced kimchee down my throat while I tried to sing her carols.”

“Socks aren’t bad—they kept you warm, at least.”

“It was Los Angeles, Wally. We were still wearing shorts and flip flops on Christmas Eve!”

When, instead of Turkey on Thanksgiving, she serves up gingerbread cookies and hot chocolate with peppermint sticks sticking out of the cups, he laughs a little less and raises his eyebrows a little more.

“I thought the point of Thanksgiving was to pretend to be a red blooded American. You know, mash some potatoes, carve some turkeys.” She looks at him funny and adjusts the pom-pom on her hat. “No, Wallace, it’s to prepare for the festivities that begin in December. These are the preliminary rounds before we start popping open the windows on our advent calendars!” And she shakes him awake at three in the morning the Friday after they don’t eat turkey so that they can stand, shivering, outside of a big department store.

Linda parks him by the cart and periodically returns with her arms full of things—“Who else were we supposed to get gifts for? We got the box set of that show with the sassy women for Lois, the bag of fake vomit for Clark to show Lois that we’re on her side and—do we have to get something for Bart’s little girlfriend? The one with the eye patch? I was thinking maybe a stuffed parrot, because it’d be funny, you know, since she’s a pirate. Or she looks like one at any rate. We should probably make her feel welcome, because Bart’s bringing her to Christmas dinner, and—fuck, I forgot about Iris. Wally—” She doesn’t realize he’s fallen asleep next to the trolley until she pauses to take a breath.

He wakes up before her on Christmas day to scarf down the plate of cookies and the milk that’s started to curdle—left out for Santa along with a pile of carrots for his reindeer (he leaves those, untouched). Tiptoes to the  bag he discarded the night before and pulls out poorly wrapped presents of various sizes he hadn’t gotten a chance to stash under the tree.

Then he dives back in to bed with her, arms wrapped around her waist and smiles to himself.

When she gets up an hour later, jumping on the bed to rouse Wally from sleep, screaming: “get up! Get up! You’re wasting precious time!” He groans but lets her pull him towards the tree anyway, which is proud and garish in the center of the room. She nearly trips over the train whizzing around it before throwing boxes at Wally’s head. “If you hate it, too bad, because I never keep receipts.”

Wally sets it aside and shoves a smaller package under her nose that she takes with a squeal. “Is it a puppy? A pony? I hope it’s a pony! It can live in the bathroom, we’ll train it to take all its dumps in the toilets and—” her face falls.

“You got me—”

“Socks.”

When she balls them up and tries to stuff them in to his mouth he pulls her in close and kisses her, grinning when she pushes against him and mutters under her breath about what a great big dope he is. “Merry Christmas, Linda.”