They’d split up.

Only for Thanksgiving, and only, they swore, for this year.

It should have been a first Thanksgiving together but with two moms both wanting their children home and too many miles between those homes, the only travel that worked were the guilt trips each one laid on their offspring.

As long as Pam could remember, her mom always hosted Thanksgiving, every year without exception. She acknowledged it was a lot of work, but it was work she was happy to do, especially since Pam and Penny had been assisting her in preparing the feast from the time they were little girls. She always said it was her special time with her daughters. There seemed to be something about the mindless action of peeling potatoes and mashing cranberries and long hours spent in the kitchen watching over the bird that inspired them to have some of their most intimate conversations.

This year especially, Helene was looking forward to the girl talk. Penny and Pam, both had new beaus to speak of. Penny, had only been dating Josh a few weeks, and Helene hadn’t heard much about him yet so she’d have lot of questions for her. Of course, Helene had heard so much about Jim for many years but now she would finally get to hear the details of their relationship now that he and Pam were finally together.

She would have loved for Jim to have come too and get to know him a little more but she was grateful just to get her daughter. In the last few years, Pam had missed every other Thanksgiving, switching off the holiday with Roy’s family. Though someone who looked a lot like Pam had been home for the holiday last year, it was an imposter, not her daughter. A spirit had inhabited the body of the person who helped Helene in the kitchen, the aberrant presence switching off from sullen and morose to brusque and temperamental. Over dinner, Pam was quiet but polite to her visiting relatives and nibbled at the food they’d spent all day preparing. Only when they were cleaning up later that evening did it finally come out about Jim’s new girlfriend. Arm deep in the sudsy water, Pam finally let tears flow as she shared every painful detail with her mother. So, this year when it came time to makes plans, Helene argued it wasn’t her Pam that was at Thanksgiving last year, meaning this year was her turn to have her daughter and insisted Pam spend it with the Beeslys.

Jim too was having trouble getting around the Thanksgiving obligation, especially since Tom and Marcie were coming with the new baby; the baby Jim hadn’t met yet and Pete and Cindy would be in from Boston. There was no way Jim was not going to be there too. Betsy was adamant.

So, for the first time since they officially began dating six months ago, they’d be away from each other for more than a day. It would be two days.  Two and a half days in fact, if counting hours, which Pam was. Despite the nice time she was having with her family she was already feeling somewhat anxious to get back. But on Thursday, when finally face to face with her mom and sister, she got a chance to share the incredibly romantic way Jim had come back to her, including a play-by-play of their first date and shared stories of how they spent days now that she and Jim were a couple.

That night as Penny and Pam shared the double bed in the guest room, she filled her sister in on the details of her nights now that she and Jim were a couple.

Friday was busy as it was every year with family traditions, brunch at the cousins in the late morning followed by an afternoon movie, and then an early dinner. When they returned to the house, they all helped take in the Christmas decorations from out of storage. Sitting around the den the family waxed nostalgic as they unboxed strings of lights, colorful glass bulbs and handmade ornaments Pam and Penny had made as children. Pouring through the collection of Christmas keepsakes, each with a story or a memory attached, they shared memories as they set figurines out on tabletops, twisted garland on the banisters, and hung stockings under the window—neither this nor the first house Pam lived in had a fireplace, a distressing fact for a young Pam when she first learned that’s how Santa made his way into the houses. But her dad assured her that when there was no fireplace for Santa to come down, he used the window instead. Just in case, Pam took crayons to the wall under the window, drawing a fireplace there, thus creating her first mural at the age of five.

She still loved to see the angel tree topper that once belonged to her Mee-Maw, remembering how as a little girl she somehow had found a way to get it down from the tree so she could bring it to bed in order to keep the ghost that she believed lived in her closet from coming to get her.

Helene tried to get her daughter to stay longer on Saturday, bribed her with a mani/pedi at the local salon but by early Saturday afternoon, with freshly painted nails and five Tupperware containers full of leftovers, she was back on Route 81 headed back to Scranton and Jim.

After playing the entire Travis CD once with an encore play of her favorite song, Sing, she flipped back over to the radio. Already the stations were bombarding listeners with Christmas music, but this wasn’t much of a problem for Pam since she loved the holiday tunes, at least for the first few weeks. In a few more she’d grow tired of hearing Wham’s Last Christmas at least once per hour, but currently she was happy to let it play out before she jumped over to another preset.

Last Christmas, the real-life version, was a rough one. She’d ended her relationship with Roy and was single and available when Jim returned to Scranton.

But he wasn’t.

He’d already found his new, someone special in Karen. Subject to watching them get closer and closer every day in the office, Pam was feeling sorry for herself and without anyone to share the season with she couldn’t even bring herself to get a tree.

Regardless of Jim’s current status, she knew she had been right to end things with her fiancé, but memories of Christmases with Roy were mostly happy ones. And between her sadness over Jim and thinking of happier times with Roy, she sunk deeper into the funk she was experiencing.

The tradition of decorating the tree was something she would miss that year. It was one of the few things she and Roy had both truly enjoyed doing. Even though the festive quaff he enjoyed while stringing lights and arranging ornaments, was a six pack of Bud, at least he drank from a can covered by a Santa suit beer cozy that she’d bought for him a few years back. And as long as Pam still got to enjoy her hot cocoa with candy canes, marshmallows and whipped cream she didn’t care what he chose to make merry with.

It didn’t even bother her that he put no effort into making plans for the day. It left Pam with the opportunity to arrange his whole schedule from that morning through night. It was the rare occasion when they spent the whole Saturday alone together, when there were no ball games with the guys, no sports to watch with his brother, no card games he couldn’t miss. For tree trimming day she had him exclusively, for 24 hours, first shopping for the best Woodland Pine and then decking it with lights and the ornaments they’d collected over the years. Pam also had full control of the music and even would catch Roy humming along to It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas and they’d both rock out to Billy Squire’s Christmas is a Time to Say I Love You, following his advice and sharing the sentiment with each other once the tree was properly trimmed.

While hanging her stockings at home with Roy, she had no idea someone else was slowly becoming hypnotized by the song’s regular airplay, Billy hanging out on his shoulder like Mephistopheles, subconsciously egging him on to spill his feelings. Sadly, this someone chickened out before sweet talk and candy found their way to her heart, even if a teapot full of memories still did.

Before the teapot became an argument a week or so later—why would you trade an ipod for a stupid teapot—Roy and Pam enjoyed their holiday tradition. Once they decorated the tree and admired how nice it looked with colorful glass ornaments, sparkling tinsel and glistening lights, they would call in for pizza. By now Roy was too drunk to go anywhere but Pam was just as happy to stay home, admire their handiwork and watch Christmas movies together. Starting with their joint favorite, A Christmas Story, once he passed out, Pam watched the classics like Miracle on 34th Street and It's a Wonderful Life while they lay together under a blanket on the couch, Roy’s light snoring preferable to complaints about her lame Christmas movie choices, she might hear if he were awake.

By Sunday morning when they woke up, the Norman Rockwell tradition would be over, but the holiday cheer from sharing the prior day would stay with her as she went food shopping and did laundry.  Even though she’d preferred being home where the tree was she happily joined him at the bar where they watched football games with his friends still holding on to the good mood she was in from the day before.

A few days later the glow of the holiday would start to fade into the background as the same old arguments propped up. Fights over whose house they would go to on Christmas Eve. Angry conversations over what made-up excuse kept him from being able to make Isabel’s annual ugly sweater party and resentment over how if they both worked the same hours why was she able to get her holiday gift shopping done but he still needed to shop for gifts at the eleventh hour, or worse ask her to.

But even with all the petty fights over parties and ipods she still had someone to share her Christmas with and that was better than the terrible loneliness she felt last year. Arguing with Roy about how much to spend on gifts was a lot less painful than watching Jim and Karen make plans to do their holiday shopping together. Sadly, the pain of watching them and being alone dampened her Christmas spirit to the point that she didn’t even hang up her stocking on the window sill, something she’d been doing ever since she’d first became old enough to learn about Santa and continued long after she was old enough to learn about Santa.

Last year there were no decorations and limited holiday plans.  She barely made it to Isabel’s ugly sweater party, wearing a chunky grey sweater that was ugly only because it was what she wore when Jim returned to Scranton and was now tainted with the murk she felt when she discovered he was seeing someone.

When Isabel gave her a hard time about her sweater’s lack of kitsch saying it wasn’t really an ugly sweater she responded in a morose voice.

“Oh Isabel, if you only knew how truly ugly this sweater now is.”

But this year, this year was like finding out Santa was real after all.  This year was hair combs and watch fobs and bags full of letters written on Dunder Mifflin paper. This year she was celebrating it with Jim and so she was beyond excited to get into the holiday spirit. What Jim lacked in his enthusiasm for Halloween he more than made up for with his Christmas cheer. Already they had plans set for the celebrating the season.  Pam's family would have them Christmas Eve and Christmas Day they've head to Jim’s. But the days leading up to Christmas was all theirs. They had brand new, matching ugly sweaters for Isabel’s party, hers with the front of a reindeer knitted into the panel and his with the back end, a trail of lights slinking off the tail and trailing off to nowhere unless he stood next to Pam where it connected to the lights that were tangled up in her half’s antlers. Next week they had plans to pick out a tree together and blocked out their Saturday to adorn it afterwards. She was excited see what kind of tree trimming skills he had when Angela wasn't dictating where the ornaments should go.

Bing was now crooning I’ll be Home for Christmas, as Pam took a mental inventory of her decorations when it suddenly came to her. She had none.

Packed away in boxes, the ornaments and lights, garlands and bows were probably still exactly where she left them two Christmases ago, collecting dust in Roy’s garage. He obviously wasn’t in the mood to put up a tree last year either and so the tree trimming paraphernalia remained untouched and undivided in storage. In her lack of spirit last year, she’d forgotten all about them. Sure, she could call over and ask if she could come get them but they were tied to her past and this Christmas was about new beginnings.

Instead, she’d suggest a trip to Target before the games tomorrow to buy new ornaments and lights. Of course, that meant starting fresh from nothing and money was a little tight now that she was paying off a sizable credit card bill, the residual effects of her zealous overspending for Jim’s birthday.

It would have to be a smallish tree and it would have to be decorated with a minimalist aesthetic but that didn’t matter now. What did was beginning new traditions with Jim. Starting a new collection of shared ornaments, making new memories of singing carols as they sat tied up in a tangle of lights figuring out which bulb was out and therefore keeping the whole string from illuminating, and hanging new stockings on a window ledge since her apartment, like her childhood house had no fireplace. But the more she thought about all the expenses of Christmas the more she realized how much it would set her back, the more she realized a tree and all that it entailed would be way more than she should rightly spend.

As she got nearer to town, she took out her phone, lowering Mariah’s All I Want for Christmas is You, she always hated that song anyway, and called Jim.

“Hey hon, you almost home?” he asked through a yawn, his voice having that extra gravel it always did when he first woke up.

“Did I wake you?”

No, well maybe, I must have nodded off watching TV waiting for you. I think I still have a turkey coma. My mom prepares her bird with extra tryptophan.”

Pam chuckled, a note of sadness still in her tone as she thought about the reality of not being able to decorate a tree as she’d planned with Jim.

“I’m about 15 minutes from your place. Should I swing by there?”

“Um, don’t you want to get back to your place and get settled? I can meet you there in an hour.”

Pam was a little surprised at his answer, she was anxious to see him and knew her felt the same, he’d said as much when she spoke to him that morning. She assumed he’d want her to come right over but quickly explained it away in her mind that he’d been lazing away the morning and probably hadn’t yet showered or even got out of his pajamas.

 “Ok, but Jim, I have no Christmas decorations.”

“That’s okay Beesly, I know there were no elves decorating your place while you were gone. I don’t expect your place to be all decked out just yet,” he joked, Pam imagining his silly grin through the phone.

“Besides, I thought we were going to do that together next weekend.”

“No Jim, I just remembered, I never got back all my Christmas stuff from Roy. I have nothing, no lights, no ornaments, no tree stand or blanket, not even a stocking. And I’m broke, I don’t think we can afford to decorate a tree this year.”

With that her voice started to crack, while Jim’s suddenly switched to the soft, calming croon that came out whenever Pam was sad or worried or in rare occasions, mad at him.

“Hey, Pam relax. We will figure it out. We can get a small tree and I’ll pay for it. We don’t need to get a ton of stuff to decorate it, we can make stuff, steal some ornaments from my parents, improvise. I promise you, we will have a beautiful tree.”

“Okay,” Pam sniffled through the phone rushing off before her emotions got the better of her and she was in a full out bawl. “I’ll see you in an hour.”