• Edmund had known from the start that his new college roommate wasn’t quite human. It wasn’t the pale skin and white hair that gave him away, or the way he somehow seemed to smell like pine needles all the time; it wasn’t even his vaguely pointed ears, which could have just been a genetic curiosity. No, he just had an aura about him, and Edmund had had enough experience with the occult that he could sense it immediately.

    The two young men didn’t seem to have much in common. Edmund was applying himself diligently to business and economics, and Santa – well, Santa’s class schedule seemed to be all over the place. At first he took Religions classes, and then Anthropology, and then suddenly added Engineering, of all things; Edmund started coming home to find bits of machinery spread over the desk of the living area.

    “What are you doing, exactly?” he finally asked one day, watching Santa screw a leg onto some kind of tiny humanoid robot.

    “Do you really want to know?” Santa asked, taking a swig out of the glass of milk he seemed to always have beside him. “Somehow I don’t think you’d believe me.”
    “I already know you aren’t human. You may as well not hide it any more.”

    Santa wheeled around in his chair, staring wide-eyed through his messy white bangs. “Is it obvious?”

    “Not to most, I imagine. I wouldn’t worry about it much. I just want to know what you’re working so diligently toward.”

    Santa looked down at the scribbled blueprints and mechanical pieces covering his desk, than back at Edmund. “All right, I’ll tell you,” he said finally. “But only because I haven’t been able to talk about this with anyone else, and it’s driving me crazy.”

    --

    Watching Santa as he outlined his plans for the ultimate holiday, Edmund was astonished at the depths of the other man’s fervor. Astonished, and impressed. He couldn’t imagine ever being quite that devoted to anything. Then again, Santa was an immortal, magical being, and one with an obvious gift for invention.

    After that, things got even more crazy in the tiny dorm. Edmund would often do his homework in the library; now that he felt he had nothing to hide, Santa was going overboard planning every minor detail of his holiday, and the room was constantly full of plans and prototypes and decorations and even recipes. The latter was sometimes a blessing, Edmund had to admit; he was especially fond of the eggnog. But watching his roommate pull farther away from him and into his own world, Edmund found himself feeling surprisingly lonely. He had plenty of dates, of course, but sometimes he wished Santa would accompany Edmund to parties or just dinner once in a while. Often Edmund would come home in the wee hours of the morning to find Santa asleep at his desk. He looked younger when sleeping; the whiteness of his hair and skin made him almost pretty. On several of those mornings Edmund found himself watching the other man sleep. Once he even brushed the bangs out of his eyes with his fingertips. Later he couldn’t stop thinking about how soft Santa’s hair had been.

    --

    One night in late November, with the heavy chill of imminent winter hanging in the air, Edmund opened the door to a sight that took his breath away.

    The overhead lights were off, and hanging from every corner of the room – from the desk, from the bookshelf, from the window frame – were tiny white light bulbs, as though hundreds of glittering stars had been sprinkled around the room.
    “Santa?” he murmured hesitantly.

    “Do you like it?” the other man asked eagerly. Edmund could vaguely see his outline in the desk chair. “I’ve decided. My holiday has to be in winter. Because winter is so bleak, you know? We need a reason to celebrate. We need a reason to light up the darkness for a while.”

    “This… it’s beautiful!” Edmund dropped his bookbag on the floor and peered into the bedroom, where lights glittered from the posts of the twin beds. He stepped in to take a closer look before he realized there was something else hanging from the ceiling. “What’s that?”

    “Mistletoe,” Santa explained, coming to stand next to him. “It’s one of the only plants that has fruit this time of year. I thought it would make a good decoration, and maybe a symbol of life, or fertility, or… something. And there’ll be a tradition, where if two people are standing under the mistletoe, they have to kiss.”

    Edmund looked again at the bunch of leaves and berries hanging over his head, then over at Santa. “I suppose traditions have to start somewhere,” he said, leaning forward.

    Santa gasped in surprise when their lips met, and Edmund took the opportunity to deepen the kiss. Santa tasted like cocoa and mint and his lips were so warm and soft that Edmund wasn’t sure he ever wanted to stop. He put his arms around Santa’s waist, felt the other man’s on his shoulders – and then they slid down, down his back, and still down, until it was Edmund’s turn to be surprised.

    --

    Afterward they lay together in Edmund’s tiny twin bed, Santa watching Edmund sleep and marveling at the way his normally stern face looked so relaxed and peaceful. There was no denying that he’d just made a foolish mistake, but there was one thing he had never told Edmund, and wasn’t planning to. Once Xmas became a real holiday, no one would be able to remember a time without it. Everyone’s memories would be modified so it would be as though Xmas had always existed, and no one would remember that Santa had once lived among them and gone to college like a normal person. In other words, Edmund would forget him entirely.

    For the time being, though, he would let himself be content to lie there under the twinkling Xmas lights, basking in Edmund’s body heat. For a while they could be connected; for a while they could be warm. And that was what Xmas was all about.