Suzanne Clores, a Chicago-based teacher, writer and author of Memoirs of a Spiritual Outsider, has posted an essay in our My Life So Far story project called Tradition: Make it Or Break It. Clores’ piece is the spiced ginger chocolate cookie of holiday stories: sweet and delicious, with a surprising bite.

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 [...]