Slay bells are ring-ting tingling as we pan over the picturesque Vermont town of Cringleville.

It's December 23rd, pre-Christmas. That's what they call it here.

Cringleville is nuts about Christmas. Chessnuts, that is.

It's the biggest Christmas town in America, at least since Tinseltown changed its name to Hollywood.

A young woman, not so young, if you ask her mother, who's been so patient with her, by the way,

walks along the small town streets, nose deep in a book called 1001 funny jokes,

as a car goes speeding by and blasts her with dirty, shitty water. She does the thing where

she exhales air up at her bangs. Yep, that's me. My name is Holly Silverbell. Ironic for someone

who hates Christmas, but you have to understand, I've got my reasons. Growing up, my father was

always absent during the holidays. The first

time I got alcohol poisoning was because of eggnog, and my ex-boyfriend in New York City,

well, let's just say that when I broke up with him, I broke up with Christmas, too.

She tosses her soggy book in a trash can and begins shopping for furniture on her phone. A man holds up a cup

toward Holly. His clothes are just dirty enough that the audience watching at home understands he's

a classic style vagrant, no more, no less. Spare some change for Christmas, ma'am? Sorry,

no change. Humbug. I don't like Christmas, you see, because of my backstory.

The vagrant lurches forward right when she says backstory and throws up eggnog all over Holly's left boot.

See, stuff like this keeps happening to me, and you'll have to excuse me if I'm not quite in the Christmas spirit.

This holiday is the bane of my existence, and my hometown is obsessed with it.

There's a counterstrike Christmas map based on this town, for God's sake.

Oh, great.

Now here comes a reindeer.

...