Here at SMITH Magazine the air outside is hot as soup, but William Denton conjures up a painfully cold Christmas day in his story, “So this is Christmas…”—chilly not so much for the temperature as the family. He writes: “When I wake up, the only wreath in the house is one of cigarette and marijuana smoke that lazily curls around the naked bulb in the ceiling of our studio apartment.”

Genevieve invokes Christmas again in Heartbreak the First, a twentysomething’s self-reinvention, spurred by the sight of a giant, frozen octopus. “I am a mess. A red, sobby mess, with a bulbous nose like a Christmas reindeer. I start crying again. My nightshirt quickly becomes my handkerchief.”

Tags: Christmas, depression, holidays