After five dinner dates and one ice skating outing over the course of three weeks, Greta was prepared to entertain the idea of officially recognizing Lucien as her romantic partner, a designation he had been lobbying for since the end of the second dinner date. Greta’s online dating profile said that she was looking for someone unique, and Lucien was unique. Was he unique in the ways Greta had envisioned her future romantic partner being? That was hard to say. The specifics of true uniqueness are inherently difficult to predict. Was Greta attracted to the specific ways in which Lucien was unique? Yeah, sure, some of them. Most of them, even, or at least most of the ones she’d begun to notice over the course of five dinner dates, an ice skating outing, and a pretty thorough ongoing text conversation.

               Twenty-four days before Christmas, when Greta came home from work, she found an envelope from Lucien in her mailbox. He had not told her to expect a letter. Greta took the letter inside, kicked off her boots in the entryway, and sat down on her couch to read it, so curious as to what it could be that she didn’t bother to remove her coat. She tore open the envelope and inside she found three pieces of unlined paper covered front and back in squashed, handwritten script. The pages were numbered one through six. At the top of the first page, Lucien had printed the words “My Christmas List” in double-sized, all-caps letters. An introductory paragraph followed just below this heading. It read:

               I know, Greta, that we have not discussed exchanging Christmas gifts this year, but whether you soon decide to accept me as your partner or prefer to delay that decision until after the holidays are over, I figure that we have become close enough where not exchanging anything at all for Christmas would feel wrong. With the likelihood of a gift exchange established, the practicality of first exchanging Christmas Lists is obvious. But I have a further reason for sending you my Christmas List and hoping that you will send me yours: I believe that reading someone’s Christmas List is the best way to get to know them. On what evidence do I base this belief? Well, my parents have read more of my Christmas Lists than anyone else has, and my parents know me better than anyone else does. Some might say that’s a coincidence, a trick of fate, but I don’t think it is. I think my parents know me better than anyone else does precisely because they’ve read more of my Christmas Lists than anyone else has. Throughout my life, once a year (I don’t believe in Birthday Lists), they have received updates as to What I Want. And what are we, as humans, ultimately, but a collection of desires? So, Greta, here is What I Want, from you, for Christmas.

               Greta looked up, gazing into the empty space hanging in the middle of her living room. She had a feeling, based on all available evidence, that she should pause before reading the rest of Lucien’s list, that she should, in some way, prepare herself for what she was about to learn about the guy she’d been seeing. This would be a good opportunity, she realized, to remove her coat, but before she could act on this realization, her eyes had returned to the list of their own accord and her coat stayed on.

1.      Choo-Choo Train

I would never refer to a real train as a “choo-choo train,” but I do refer to toy trains as such, especially those of the variety often found on Christmas Lists of a bygone era. Since this is the first Christmas List you’ve ever received from me, you wouldn’t know this, but I always put “choo-choo train” as the first item on every Christmas List. I believe it sets a classically Christmas tone for the list, which is important because what follows “choo-choo train” may sometimes feel out of place on a traditional Christmas List, and I always want the recipient of my Christmas List to be sure that my Christmas List has not veered into the territory of a different kind of document. All that said, you can get me a choo-choo train for Christmas if you want to. Its presence on my Christmas List means that I, by definition, want it, and will, therefore, be grateful to receive it.

2.      Home-made Coupons

You can hand-write them or make them on a computer and print them. Sample text would be something like: “Present this coupon to Greta Floyse at any time to receive one hundred dollars” or “Present this coupon to Greta Floyse at any time to receive fifty dollars” or whatever your assumed future budget permits. Keep in mind that the coupons will be eligible for redemption the very second I receive them.

3.      Specialer Pancake

Every Christmas morning, my mom prepares me a special pancake for breakfast. However, if you were to make an even more special pancake—a specialer pancake—and then present it to me sometime prior to Christmas morning, you could beat my mom to the punch. She won’t be happy about it, but there’s nothing she can do to prevent it. She won’t even know about it until it’s too late unless you inform her of your plans, and why would you? Or maybe she’ll never know at all, maybe she’ll just be left to forever wonder why my eyes no longer light up in the same way at the appearance of the special Christmas morning pancake. She may privately speculate about the existence of a specialer pancake, but if I know her, which I do since I’ve been reading her Christmas Lists since I was old enough to save up enough of my own money to buy Christmas gifts for others, then she will never express these fears aloud to me, my dad, or anyone.

4.      Outlandish Promise

I would in no way expect you to keep your outlandish promise. But your inevitable breaking of the outlandish promise would give me some leeway to break a future promise of my own, which would be a comforting thought. You might think that your breaking of an outlandish promise would only give me leeway to break an equally outlandish promise, but no, a promise is a promise. If you somehow manage to fulfill the outlandish promise, that would also be a pretty good gift.

5.      One Half of a Perfect Kiss

A full perfect kiss requires perfect execution from both parties, and since I can’t be sure I’m going to receive this gift at all, I won’t be practicing my half of the kiss. And even if I did, I doubt I’m capable of delivering the other half of a perfect kiss. But if you think you’re capable of delivering half of a perfect kiss, I will do my best, in the moment, to not completely drop the ball, thereby allowing us to perhaps combine our efforts for up to 80% of a perfect kiss, which I have to imagine will feel very good for both of us even with you doing most of the heavy lifting.

               Things were happening to Greta as she read Lucien’s Christmas List. For one, she was getting warmer and warmer, which she mostly attributed to the fact that she was still wearing her coat indoors. The second thing happening to Greta was that, as she read Lucien’s Christmas List, the words on the page seemed to fade into the paper until they appeared to be behind it. Greta began to feel as if the paper was a pane of clear plastic through which she could observe the words in a habitat Lucien had constructed for them on the other side. The words paced back and forth, restless.

6.      Puppy

Whenever “puppy” has appeared on the Christmas Lists I’ve given to my parents, they haven’t been able to resist getting me a puppy. I’ve gotten several puppies over my twenty-nine Christmases. I don’t know what became of them. I remember the wriggling boxes, the bows tied to their little collars. After that, things get hazy. I have to believe that most became beloved family pets. I’m curious to see how you will respond to my inclusion of “puppy” on this Christmas List.

7.      A Pair of Shoes

This should be a pair of shoes that I would like to wear and that you would like to see me wearing.

8.      Another Pair of Shoes

If you did not get me Christmas List item #7 “A Pair of Shoes,” then you should not attempt to get this item for me.

9.      Discredited Book

I would like to take a shot at re-crediting something someday when I have the time, and already having a discredited book on hand when that time comes would be convenient.

10.   One of Your Favorite Quotations of Mine Embroidered on a Pillow

It’s OK if the quotation of mine that you choose is context-dependent because, as the person you’re quoting, I will know the context. If I’ve forgotten the context, you will intuit this by the quizzical expression on my face when I open the gift, and you can then gently remind me of the context. If I remember the context but the quote is better without context, you may attempt non-harmful means of making me forget the context.

11.    When I was ten, an old friend of my parents’ came to stay with us for two days. They knew him from college where they were all part of the same friend group. He showed up in a kind of car I’ve never seen since. He wore gray leather driving gloves which he removed only after my parents answered the doorbell and greeted him with hugs. Right away, he started trying to get them to reminisce with him, but it seemed like they could not or would not do it how he wanted them to. He would recount a story of something that had happened to all of them, but my parents would chime in with details he considered irrelevant, or they would interject to emphasize points he did not deem worthy of emphasis, or they would downplay aspects about which he felt strongly. I don’t think they were doing this for my sake. I don’t think they were trying to prevent him from revealing what they were really like in college for fear that I would use their past indiscretions to justify my own bad behavior. I think they knew me well enough to know that I would never care what they were really like in college for any reason. I think my parents undermined their friend’s attempts at reminiscence because they wanted to hurt him, although he did not seem to suspect anything like that. I think he assumed that things had just grown awkward between them because of the passage of time, the way it had altered each of their characters. But I know them. I know what their lips and eyebrows do when they’re trying to hurt someone while maintaining plausible deniability. But then their friend, although his enthusiasm for reminiscing was rapidly fading, began to tell another story from their college days. Maybe he intended this as a final attempt, at least for a time. This story was about the night my dad and my mom first met. Their friend said it was just before school let out for the Christmas break. He said there was record-breaking cold in their college town. He said people kept finding insects not native to the region encased in ice. Then people reported these findings to the authorities who did nothing about it and weren’t sure what people expected or wanted them to do. My parents’ friend said my dad was a pizza deliverer and the heat in his car didn’t work so he drove around bundled head to toe for survival and also felt compelled to drive recklessly on the slippery roads because the pizzas would not stay warm for long given the conditions. So my father was careening through the streets with a tall order of rapidly cooling pizzas on the passenger seat of his car, and my mother was, at this moment in the past, said their friend, outside of her apartment and on her way to throw a plate of Christmas cookies in the garbage. She had been trying to eat better and didn’t want the temptation in the house. She had just reached the garbage can on the curb when my father came skidding around the corner. This combination of circumstances could have led to disaster, said my parents’ friend, but instead, it led to a great and enduring love. When he said this part, my parents didn’t smile or nod or look at each other or me, but neither did they subvert or contradict or distract their friend. They just watched him with faces closed but for the gleaming of their eyes. And it should also be noted here that my parents had by this point in my life told me the story of how they met several times, and this was not that story. My parents’ friend continued, then, picking up at the moment where it seemed like he was suggesting my father’s car was about to hit, or nearly hit, my mother. He said it was not correct to say that the car hit a patch of ice because each street was more ice than not, but my father, completely and finally, lost control of the car on that specific section of ice, and the car spun toward my mother, who was transfixed at the sight of the car spinning toward her, motionless in her unlaced boots and white jeans and long half-buttoned coat with no hat or gloves because her trip to the garbage can was supposed to take no more than one minute. My parents’ friend said my mother, with the plate of cookies still untrashed and in hand, caught a glimpse of my father’s remorseful face spinning past before the car’s right quarter panel caught her square on the hip in a burst of pain and flung her back against the brick face of her building. This would have been a natural place for my parents’ friend to pause the story for dramatic effect, but he did not pause. He said that in the following moment, my parents both found themselves, one year later, walking into the same college classroom. The class was called The Probable Unlikelihood of Advantageous Outcomes. My parents recognized no one else in the class, not even each other, but as they were looking for their seats, my father noticed a speckling of tomato sauce on my mother’s shirt and my mother noticed a sprinkling of cookie crumbs in my father’s hair. They smiled, exchanged a few words, sat next to each other. The next day, they both received word that the class had been canceled, but it wasn’t a large campus, it wasn’t long before they again crossed paths, at which point they realized they had been seeking each other for what certainly felt like more than a couple days. Here, my parents’ friend concluded the story with a few more words about their exemplary relationship, said good night, and went to bed. My parents did not say good night to their friend. I asked how come in the story they told me of how they met they never mentioned the tomato sauce or cookie crumbs. It was always just oh we had a class together and on the first day we sat by each other and then the class got canceled but we found each other again on campus and just connected. But they wouldn’t answer my question. They sat as still and silent as non-native insects encased in ice.

12.   Gray Leather Driving Gloves

No idea why I want these. I just do!

Greta could hardly focus on the words of the Christmas list itself, so insistent on her attention were the words behind the list. They were desperate, almost frantic to be comprehended. She felt responsible for their agitation. She was causing it by almost-but-not-quite receiving their message. If she were a little sharper, she’d get it. If she were a little denser, they wouldn’t have gotten their hopes up. And she was boiling hot, sweating like an anti-hypocrisy crusader on the cusp of being caught in flagrant hypocrisy. That, at least, Greta could fix. She shrugged out of her coat and tossed it half way to the coat closet where it lay on the floor like a failed cake. Greta returned to Lucien’s Christmas List.

13.   Air Purifier

A few years ago I spent a lot of money on a fancy air purifier for my house and I posted about it on social media and a lot of people told me I overpaid and I insisted that I had not because it was such a good quality air purifier that it would last me for the rest of my life and, beyond that, it would even last long enough to be handed down from generation to generation as a fully functional family heirloom. But it broke almost immediately. But I can’t be seen buying a new one and I can’t buy one online or there will be a record of that transaction on the internet for any moderately skilled hacker to find. But if you get me one, you can bring it to me in a wrapped package and no prying eyes, eager to behold my downfall, will be any the wiser.

14.   A Tattoo That Could Be Interpreted as Being about Me

This could be a tattoo that simply reads “my partner,” which, if you accept me as your partner, will then be about me, which will give me confidence about the future of our relationship. But also, since the tattoo could eventually come to apply to your future partner or partners, it won’t feel like added pressure for our relationship to work out in the way that a tattoo of my full name, first and last name, or even just first name would. You could also achieve this same effect by getting a portrait tattoo that looks generally, but not exactly, like me.

15.   A Nice Case with Something Else Inside

For this one, I would open the present and say, it’s a case? And then you, with a sly smile, would say, it’s what’s in the case. I think you’d have the perfect smile for this moment, and the perfect line delivery. Then I would open the case and find the real present. Or, the rest of the present. I don’t know. This Christmas List isn’t going how I hoped it would.

16.   Headphones

17.   Cologne

18.   Sunglasses

19.   A Robe or a Wallet or a Watch

20.   Gift Cards

21.   Surprise Me

This Christmas List is not useless. It is not meaningless. I know it contains valuable knowledge, but where? As I read it over now, I get a faint sense of its true purpose, but it always eludes me. I wish I could give my Christmas List to a genuine St. Nicholas. I wish I could give my Christmas List to myself, reading it as if for the first time, reading it with newly minted eyes. I want something that I am incapable of listing. The thing that I am incapable of listing. The thing that could never appear on a Christmas List of mine no matter how many I wrote. But it isn’t the surprise itself I want. I know it’s a particular thing. The surprise should come from the moment of realization that you have given me the right gift, the surprise should come from the recognition that I have at last received the gift that my Christmas Lists have been trying to coax out of the ether since the day I wrote my first one. I wonder if that first Christmas List, wherever it is, with its crude lettering and myriad misspellings, came closest to revelation. I wonder if each successive Christmas List has gotten worse, more and more removed from-

Greta could read no further because the other words, throwing themselves against the insides of the pages, broke through and, though battered and misshapen from their ordeal, obscured the remainder of Lucien’s handwritten text. Dragging themselves into a crooked line, the other words managed to form one sentence before they collapsed and melted away. It read, i am sustained by only holiday disappointment.

After a short trip to the kitchen for a restorative snack, Greta returned to the couch and pulled out her laptop. She purchased two sweaters in slightly different shades of blue from an online retailer, input the return address on the envelope from Lucien as the sweaters’ destination, checked the box to indicate they were a gift, and when the website asked if she would like to include a message for the recipient, she wrote: Merry Christmas, Lucien. Although I have decided I do no want to be your partner and would prefer to no longer see you, I felt I should send you a Christmas gift because, though I don’t know why or how, I was able to discern the one true request concealed within your list. You asked for sweaters like these. I hope your moment of realization/recognition is as fulfilling as you have longed for it to be. Please don’t feel obligated to get a gift for me. Best wishes, Greta.