How did it start? Well, like every tradition, its beginning was almost accidental. 

So.

Once upon a time…

...was a day before Christmas — just like today. But this day was special as Pam Beesly was going to spend it with the Andersons — for the first time since Roy had given her a ring and asked her to marry him. On the way there, he told her to relax and have fun, and Pam smiled. There was nothing to worry about — his family had seen her before, knew her, and even liked her quite well.

She couldn’t stop fidgeting with her new ring, though. 

The Andersons’ household was always a little too loud, too hectic, and just a bit too much, and today it seemed to be even more than usual. Pam was taken aback by the hurricane of hugs and greetings, and then — by the ebb-tide of complete disinterest. But it was nothing, honestly. They arrived in the middle of preparations after all, and everyone returned to their business, trying to accomplish everything until the evening, so there wasn’t much time for pleasantries. Pam was about to ask Roy if they could help with anything when she saw him putting his winter coat on back, and so did other men. 

‘Where are you going?’ she asked, suddenly alarmed. ‘Did something happen?’

‘Nah, don’t worry,’ he gave her his charming smile. ‘That’s our tradition. We’ll be back before dinner.’ 

One quick kiss, a slam of the closing front door, and she was alone. 

She went to the kitchen where the women were left to chop, boil, roast, stuff, bake, and timidly offered them her help. The way Mrs. Anderson and her oldest daughter exchanged glances wasn’t subtle, but they offered her to peel potatoes, and Pam was glad to busy her hands with anything, even if it was a task that a preschooler could do. 

His mother was friendly, and his sisters were nice, but Pam felt that she was a grain of sand in this well-oiled mechanism, and her clumsy assistance couldn’t match with their finely-honed skills. So, at the end, when Pam finished with potatoes and asked if she maybe could chop some veggies, Mrs. Anderson handed her a couple of boxes and asked Pam to decorate the Christmas tree. 

Now, that was something she’d do eagerly. 

The decorations inside these boxes were pretty, yet mismatched — some of them were old and almost vintage, another clearly were bought at the last Target’s sale — and Pam caught herself genuinely enjoying arranging the decorations around the tree. She opened the lightest box, expecting to find some tinsel inside, but there was a single giant glass bauble, placed carefully in the nest of cotton. It should be someone’s favorite, Pam thought, taking the fragile thing into her hands, but, honestly, she found it rather ugly; it was a typical tourist souvenir with a sloppily painted landscape and a tacky color scheme. Nevertheless, Pam placed this bauble on the most prominent place on the tree and turned the lights on. She watched as bright gleams reflected on its shiny surface and a sudden thought appeared in her mind.

I could do it better.

It was such a silly idea — to make her own Christmas decoration. She didn’t paint or draw in ages, and she had never ever worked with glass, so she didn’t even know where to start. Pam forgot about this idea as soon as Roy returned, with eggnog stains on his clothes and alcohol in his breath. His own behavior, her disappointment, and the awful off-hand comments his drunk uncle made on her distracted her completely from anything festive.

She forgot about it then, but this idea, no matter how silly and feeble it was, didn’t disappear completely. It hid in the tiny corner of her brain, somewhere on the edge of her consciousness, far away from daily thoughts and worries, but whenever she saw garlands or Christmas lights, it appeared again. 

It appeared again, but Pam was too busy looking for a stable job.

It appeared again, but she was too exhausted with their last fight with Roy.

It appeared again, but they didn’t even have a Christmas tree that year. 

The next time this idea appeared when she sat in the conference room and tried to take notes on her new boss’ pompous speech about the importance of traditions, family values, and blah-blah-blah. Pam lost track of the train of his thoughts and doodled absentmindedly Michael as Jack-in-the-Box. 

‘Oh, looks nice! But you forgot about his handle.’ 

She turned her head to see that Jim, her, probably, most normal coworker, peeked at her caricature. 

‘And add some tinsel,’ he whispered. ‘You know, to symbolize the brilliance of his speeches.’ 

‘Hey, who is the artist here?’ she whispered back. Her other coworker, Dwight, who still partly terrified her and partly amused, shushed at them, and Pam looked down at her notebook.

She added a few sparks around Michael’s head. She couldn’t remember when she called herself an artist last time. 

She liked the sound of it. 

Her new job gave her more free time than she’d expected, and she noticed that she used it mostly for drawing. No wonder, though, — working in the paper company and not using the bonus of her almost unlimited access to the office supplies would be absurd. Her sketches were still pretty much amatory, but Pam couldn’t help but see some progress in the lines and shapes she was making on the paper. Sometimes she felt so confident with her work that she showed her scribbles to Jim. He always said they were good, though Pam thought he was just being polite. They were friends, and friends supported each other’s works even if the said works, in fact, were utmost crap. 

It was Jim who conjured the idea back into her mind. Roy drove them home and couldn’t stop bickering about Pam trading IPod for a teapot while she clasped her gift in her hands and managed to look sorry — when she, actually, wasn’t. Her guilty face and slouched shoulders, though, soothed Roy’s irritation a little, so he dropped her out at their home and went party with his buddies almost as if nothing happened at all. 

Pam was glad to be left behind this time. Once she was alone, she explored the tiny tokens she took out of the teapot and couldn’t stop smiling from the joy that every single piece brought her. On their own, they were pretty mundane, but the special moments and occasions they symbolized made them invaluable. Her thoughts were drifting back and forth, bringing her warmth and feeling of sweet nostalgia. After some time, she found herself enjoying not only the mementos themselves, but also the idea to have a gathering of little anchors keeping the most precious memories. She gathered her sketches, scattered all around the dining room, and looked through them. Page after page, the impressions of the waning year whirled before her eyes; she thought that one of them could make a lovely picture on the Christmas bauble. But with the same clarity, she knew that she wouldn’t make it — she didn’t have any proper tools, and spending money on them would be a waste. Her enthusiasm turned into something melancholy, but she tried to think positively. She could buy something useful instead of an art kit she’d use once or twice. Or she could save this money for her wedding — someday, it still should happen, she believed. 

Pam hid a pile of her sketches and went to bed. Drifting to sleep, she dreamed of Christmas lights and teal decorations. 

She had her tools the next year. Brushes with bristles made of squirrel and sable hair, gouache, oil and acrylic paints — the first purchase she’d made right after calling off her wedding but before she’d realized how expensive living on her own really was. All of those were locked in her cupboard, and sometimes she opened its door and observed her treasures. Without disturbing the still untouched lids, she hid them away again. She accomplished every task diligently in her lessons, but her simple watercolors and sketches weren’t worth using those precious materials. 

Like the year before, Pam was thinking a lot about Christmas baubles. This time, though, Pam thought she was a Christmas bauble herself. She smiled and sang along the carols, and her red sweater was the most festive thing she’d ever worn to work, but that was just a thin layer of shiny glass. 

Inside, she was hollow. 

She repeated her usual celebration pattern like a broken record but felt none of the Christmas spirit; all the cheers and sparkles couldn’t fill the void in her chest. At the end of the party, she was the one who stayed to clean up and take off the decorations. The Christmas lights were off when she stepped to the tree and took one of the ornaments in her hand. It laid on her palm, so tiny and fragile, and Pam wanted so badly to smash it into the dust. She wondered detachedly if the pain in her fingertips could muffle this emptiness inside of her body. 

She wondered if her own blood, running from the cuts, could make her feel any warmer... 

But this story had a happy ending, and the next December, Pam didn’t feel empty anymore. In fact, she felt full of smiles and giggles, and some might even say that she was constantly high, but it was pure happiness that bubbled inside of her like cold champagne and threw its spark all around her. 

And when she felt that happy, she wanted to make happy everyone around. 

It was then that she remembered her old silly idea, but this time — for the first time in many, many years — she felt like there was nothing impossible for her, and she was actually going to make her intention real. 

‘What is your moment of the year?’ Pam asked Jim once. ‘You know, the one that sums up the whole year for you?’ 

Jim answered with a sly smile, and she blushed fiercely. 

‘Seriously? Could you, maybe, choose something with a PG rating?’

His smile turned wistful when he said another one, and she grew quiet too. But then her hand flew to caress his cheek, and she leaned closer to kiss his lips, and quite soon, he wasn’t melancholic anymore. 

Truth be told, he also forgot what they were talking about just five minutes ago, but that was for the better. She didn’t want to spoil the surprise for him.

On the day of Christmas — or, rather, on the day of the office Christmas party — Pam gave Jim a little light box. She watched as he opened it, and her heart dropped when he said nothing for too long. 

I did it all wrong.

‘Hey,’ he said finally, closing the box with his present carefully. ‘Is it a singular piece or is it a part of a set?’ 

‘It’s not a set,’ Pam said, ‘but I have another one with a different image.’ 

‘Great,’ Jim smiled. ‘Then how about that: we ditch this lame party, you go to yours to take that other piece and meet me at mine.’  

‘Yeah, sure,’ Pam nodded, still puzzled by his suddenness. ‘Although… Dwight is in charge of the party. He probably has security guarding the exit.’

Jim smiled reassuringly and winked at her. 

‘I think I could distract Dwight for a minute or two while you make your daring escape.’ 

‘Are you...’ she started, but all his look said that he, actually, was. Pam smiled as well. 

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But I demand a play-by-play retell of what I’ll miss.’ 

She then returned to the reception, and Jim headed to the conference room, where Dwight tried to arrange cards for a loosely Christmas-themed sci-fi quiz. Pam grabbed her belongings before sneaking out through the main door. A minute later, waiting for the elevator, she heard a muffled yet distinguishable roar ‘Michael! MICHAEL!’. 

Pam smiled, biting her lip. 

She left the office building in a hurry and didn’t notice the first snowflakes dancing in the air. She spotted snow later when the door closed after her, and she stepped out of the safety of her apartment complex into the chilliness of the parking lot. The layer of snow was so thin that her boots left dark footprints in it. But it kept falling, and the night sky above her head was almost white. 

In the morning, these snowflakes would turn into snowdrifts, Pam thought absentmindedly, getting stuck at the beginning of a traffic jam. All the city would be paralyzed, and they would barely be able to leave the house. 

So good she wasn’t going to leave. 

Windows of Jim’s house were dark, and for a moment, she was worried that he didn’t make it before the snowfall; but then she spotted his car at its usual place and exhaled with relief, parking nearby. She got out of the car and, with a well-trained motion, adjusted the strap of her overnight bag on her shoulder. 

Jim opened the door after the first knock, and Pam sensed that he radiated the same relief she’d felt earlier.

‘Come inside, quickly,’ he greeted her with a peck on her cheek. ‘Are you cold?’ 

‘No, I’m good,’ she answered. Jim took her coat, and Pam went to his living room. The only illumination there were ravels of Christmas lights and… she couldn’t believe her eyes. His fireplace, which usually was the storage of empty Chinese take-out boxes and other trash, was cleaned neatly. Dozens and dozens of candles, enormous and tiny, were placed inside, creating the circle of golden glowing. 

She made two steps further, and another object caught her eyes. A small Christmas tree — or, rather, only a fir branch — stood in a big jar on Jim’s coffee table. It was decorated with a single glass bauble, a winding line girdled the golden surface of the ornament. In this lighting, this line looked almost black, but Pam knew that it was lilac.

She also knew, though it couldn’t be seen from her angle, that there was the word ‘us,’ hidden between its winds.

Her hand had painted it, after all.

‘I think my present is a little lonely there,’ she heard Jim’s steps and quiet voice behind her. ‘Could you make it feel better?’ 

‘Of course,’ Pam said softly and opened her bag. There was a box, a copy of the one she gave Jim earlier, with a bauble she’d made for herself. Jim watched as Pam set her piece on the tree, a dark-blue glass ornament sprinkled with amber sparks, and hugged her. 

‘Merry Christmas, Pam,’ his embrace was so different from the one he’d given her on the beach, and Pam sighed, banishing that ghost of the past and hugging him back as tight as she only could and burying her face in the wool itchiness of his sweater. 

‘Merry Christmas, Jim.’

For now, it was just a fir branch and a couple of glass baubles. 

But she hoped… no, she didn’t hope. 

She knew. 

She knew that one day it would be a big Christmas tree. And their love, their friendship, and everything they’d live through together would be its decoration.