Salazar didn't quite trust the idea of christmas. It was too new. He knew yule when he saw it. The logs, the mistletoe, the holly and the hearth. He knew from old musty records, the kind he liked best, that tax season in jeruslem was traditionally in the late fall, before slaughtering time, right after harvest. The whole thing seemed too, conveniant.

Which, of course, meant nothing to his new wife. Her family was the other kind of wizard. The kind who changed with time, who embraced new traditions.

The kind who took a mans' good warm socks and charmed them garishly red and hammered a bloody nail through them and into the mantle.

"Helga! I need my bloody sock back! They're my last thick wool pair!" His wife looked at him and beamed a sunny smile in his direction.

"But Salazar, Your other pairs have holes in the toes. Everything would just fall right out the bottom!" He stared at the evergreen dropping needles on his floor and counted to ten.

"I know this dear. That's why I want to wear *this* pair. Because they *have* no holes." She absently waved a hand in his direction.

"Put them in the basket and I'll darn a pair up for you. White, or gold?" Salazar looked carefully down at his servicable black wool socks with the drafty toes.

"I'd prefer if they just stayed black."

"What are you talking about?" She turned back to him, brandishing boxes over flowing with candles and bows and baubles of all sorts. "Oh. Not your socks! What color do you want the tree decorations to be!" He closed his eyes and upped the count to twenty

"Helga, I dare say that the mounds of shrubbery you've imported into our home will be...festive in whatever bloody colours you choose, but I'm going to be late for my classes if I don't have a pair of bloody socks to wear since mine are on the bloody mantel!" His hands tightened around the sock as she made the face. It was a face he was growing to hate. Her lips pressed tightly together, her face flushed, and her eyes glittered. It was a very attractive face, if it hadn't meant two things. That he had hurt his wife, and that she was about to become very angry.

"I'm sorry to have bothered you. I don't know why I thought you'd want our first christmas to be...just take your swiving sock!" He ducked as the nail richocheted out of the mantle, wizzed over his head and broke something behind him. He stared at her tight shoulders as she turned her back and quickly snatched up his sock, slipping out the door.

***

"Salazar, are you quite aware your socks don't match?" He glared across the teachers lounge.

"Rowena, are you aware that it will take, second at most, for me to turn you into a decorative holiday shrub?" The woman smirked at him.

"Your knickers are in a twist." The woman leaned forward seriously, brushing her hair out of her eyes. "You're fighting with Helga, what did you do?"

"Why is it *my* fault if we're having a disagreement?" Rowena smirked.

"Because you married a christmas fiend. Helga will go around smiling and covering everything she sees in candles and greenery all month. She's frightenly cherrful, therefore, any disagreement must come from you." Salazar crossed his arms and sunk back in the chair.

"Damn it Rowena, I don't care about christmas! It's just yule for the christans and litle gifts for the children.It doesn't mean anything to me." The woman across the table picked up her tea cup and blew gently across the surface.

"Well, if you don't care about it, then why not let her have her way?"

***

Helga stopped in he doorway and stared at the parlour. It was garish, the mantle, the end tables, and the lovely exposed beams covered in so many boughs of spruce and bunches of mistletoe it looked as though her green house had exploded. Covering it all were candles. Fat ones, short ones, tall ones, and skinny ones, none of them the same shade of white or red, and the tree was groaning under the weight of every bow, baubble, and carved decoration both her boxes had held. There were three pairs of socks, all badly mended and brightly red, hanging from the mantle. It was hideous, save for one thing.

Her husband stood sheepishly in the middle of it all.

"I don't quite think this is the effect you would have gotten." She threw herself in his arms.

"Salazar, you did this for me? It's just beautiful."