Stockings full of coal

By Jim’s first Christmas in the office, he and Dwight hadn’t yet established themselves as enemies. In fact, they got along fine. Every once in a while, Dwight would do something incredibly strange, but Jim would just shake his head in bewilderment and get on with his day. It wasn’t like Dwight was particularly antagonizing him. And Dwight seemed to view Jim as a potential friend and protégé.

So when Jim opened his first gift from a Dunder Mifflin Secret Santa and found a tie that was an exact match of the tie Dwight was wearing that day, he looked up and found Dwight grinning at him.

“It was from me! Look,” he said excitedly, and lifted his own tie off his chest as if it would be more obvious if it were a few inches closer. He then proceeded to launch into a speech about how if they were coordinated, they could walk into meetings and impress the client before they even said a word, and be an unstoppable, matching team of salesmen, nay, sales warriors.

It was then that Jim realized he had to do something to nip this potential budding friendship in the bud. His head started buzzing with ideas for things that would really, really annoy Dwight…

Stockings full of goodies

After his first Secret Santa debacle, when he was packing up for the day and wondering what exactly to do with that God-forsaken tie, he felt a hand tap him on the shoulder. He turned and found Phyllis smiling at him and holding out a gift bag.

“What…” Jim was confused. “You weren’t my Secret Santa.”

“No, but ‘tis the season for giving and all, and I thought it was something you needed,” Phyllis responded with a bashful grin and motioned for him to take the bag.

He pulled out a winter hat and looked at it for a moment and then back to Phyllis.

“I knitted it,” she explained.

"Wow! That must have taken a lot of work. It looks so great – very professional.” Truth be told, the assortment of colors wasn’t really his thing, but it did look like a lot of effort and detail was put into it and he was impressed that someone could have done that by hand.

“I just… I noticed that the one you wear every day is pretty old and has holes in it, and I didn’t want you to catch cold.”

He smiled – a real, big smile, the first genuine smile he’d worn all day. “That’s really thoughtful of you, Phyllis. Thank you so much.” He put it on and asked, “How does it look?”

Even though the colors weren’t really his thing, when she told him it made him look ‘really smart’ he knew he’d keep wearing it every day for a long time – maybe until it got holes in it.

Stockings full of coal

Jim’s second year in the office, Michael was his Secret Santa.

By now, he knew to expect the worst from Michael, but he still wasn’t prepared when he tore off the wrapping and found the enormous box of condoms.

“Wow. Um, thanks. This’ll really…” He just couldn’t get out the words come in handy. “I mean, wow.”

Michael laughed uproariously and slapped him on the back. “I thought it was about time you started putting these things to use. I mean, how long has it been for you, like, a year?”

“That’s not really…”

“But don’t you worry, my man, because that’s not all this gift comes with. You’ll get the big surprise when the party really picks up!”

As Jim found out later when the party really “picked up,” the rest of the “gift” was an introduction to Michael’s little cousin Helen.

“And she hasn’t gotten laid in a really long time, either!” Michael announced loudly before leaving them to “get to know each other a little better.”

It was immediately apparent that even though Helen was Michael’s younger cousin, she was still a near decade older than Jim. She also had Michael’s sense of humor and spinach in her teeth the whole night.

She handed him her number before she left, with the disclaimer of, “I don’t know if you’re feeling it like I’m feeling it, but just in case.”

She thought she was winking but she was really just blinking really hard.

The scrap of paper with her number on it went immediately in the garbage, but he actually took the box of condoms home – just in case.

Stockings full of goodies

One year, someone spiked the eggnog at the Christmas party.

It was subtle – it took Jim a few glasses before he realized he was starting to get a buzz. Angela hadn’t realized either, and she was giggling after her two cups of the stuff. He grinned – he’d never seen her smile like that before.

He approached her and reached a hand out to grab her shoulder as she stumbled. “You okay?”

Normally Angela would snap at him if he dared touch her, but she just smiled up at him and said, “I’m fine. Thank you.”

He leaned up against the wall next to her and she did the same by his side.

“You are very tall,” she observed when she looked at him again.

He laughed and took another sip of his eggnog. “Well, no offense, but you’re pretty small.”

She giggled again. “You’re also funny. And you’re a nice boy. I know I don’t… I give you a hard time, but you’re not as corrupt as some of these…”

“Heathens?”

“Yes, the heathens,” she agreed. “You’re different.”

He nodded across the room in the direction of the tree. “It’s a nice party.”

“Yes, it is.” Angela smiled proudly. “Thank you.”

The next day he’d be back to being a heathen and the hangover would make Angela even more crabby than usual, but in that moment, he felt like a tall, nice boy with a new friend.

Stockings full of coal

By Pam’s second year in the office, Jim had developed a habit of gloating to himself every time Roy screwed up somehow. I would never take her to lunch on our anniversary just so I could avoid taking her to dinner and go to a football game with the guys instead. I would know what her favorite movie was. I would get her exactly what she wanted for her birthday, not something that would be ‘practical’ for both of us.

They were kind of asshole things to be gloating – even inwardly – about, but having those little things to focus on made him feel better about all the things Roy could gloat about having with Pam.

Roy had this way of almost always being at least a little off in judging what Pam wanted. So he was looking forward to the day after Christmas when Pam would come in complaining, again, that Roy had gotten her a skirt that was a few sizes too big or too small, or the DVD of the movie that he had really been wanting to watch, or a gift certificate.

It was kind of a let down when she came in all smiles with a new necklace around her neck that just shimmered against her skin, and raving that that wasn’t all he got her – he also got her a new set of charcoals, and she’d been meaning to try experimenting with charcoals again for awhile.

He knew that. He would have bought her charcoals if he hadn’t thought it would be weird. He would have bought her a necklace if she was his.

He would have done a lot of things if he’d been in Roy’s shoes, but for once Roy had done exactly what he would have done – and Jim had nothing to gloat about.

Stockings full of goodies

One year, Michael spent the entire day of the Christmas party dropping not-so-subtle hints to indicate that he had a “huge surprise” coming up for them later.

None of them was really expecting much. “I bet it’s just, like, candy canes for everyone,” Jim guessed as he reached for the dish of red and green M&Ms on Pam’s desk.

“Maybe he’s going to leave for a little while, and then come back in dressed as Santa and seriously try to convince us he’s the real deal,” Pam suggested.

“Maybe he rented actual reindeer.”

Pam made a face. “Maybe it’s Todd Packer.”

They kept throwing ideas back and forth through the rest of the morning, and Jim didn’t consider it a waste of time at all.

At five thirty, after they’d mostly finished setting up for the Christmas party, the phone rang at reception.

“Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam… Michael? Where are you calling from? … Okay? Um, okay. We’ll do that.” She hung up and looked at Jim, shrugging. “He wants us all to go up to the roof.”

They passed the word along to everyone else, and rallied them in the direction of the roof within a few minutes, despite Stanley’s grumblings about having to climb, and Angela’s about ‘unscheduled activities’.

When Jim reached the top of the step ladder to the roof, he found… a winter wonderland.

There were twinkle lights everywhere, a Christmas tree, and illuminated plastic reindeers, Santa, elves, oversized candy canes… even a nativity scene which made Angela’s frown turn into an unsure neutral expression. Even after an unseasonably warm December, with no snowfall in weeks, the ground was covered in white. Artificial, but still beautiful. The whole scene was gorgeous. Michael was standing in the middle with his arms outstretched, a huge, proud grin on his face, and for once, he had every reason to feel proud.

Jim looked over at Pam, who was gaping and then grinned at him.

Phyllis asked, “Michael, how did you even get all this up here?”

Michael’s smile wavered and he coughed uncomfortably before responding, “All a part of the magic, my friends. I can’t reveal my sources!”

As everyone started to spread out and look around, Pam grabbed Jim’s hand and pulled him a distance across the roof before she fell to the ground. “Come on, we have to make snow angels! I haven’t made one all winter.”

He rolled his eyes and called her a dork, even as he lowered to the ground next to her with a smile he didn’t even try to hide.

When they were done and sat up, he noticed that the artificial stuff was much stickier than real snow, and the entire back of her coat was covered in white. She laughed and pointed out the white on him as well before reaching over to swipe some off, and his back felt like it was on fire.

He pushed himself up to standing and she gasped. “You didn’t take the proper post-snow angel stand up procedure! Look, you messed it up!” He looked back down to where he’d been lying. She was right. He didn’t mind. “Here, take my hands so I can get up without touching mine. At least one of our angels should be preserved.”

He reached out and felt his breath speed up, even as he lifted her like she weighed nothing at all. Once standing, she took a delicate leap forward to not leave any footprints in the area and turned back around.

“Oh, yeah, wow, really. That’s some of my best work since the winter of ’89.”

“It looks perfect,” Jim added.

She looked at him and smiled. “You know, I’m really having fun. Michael actually did pretty good.”

He held her gaze for a moment, transfixed, grinning, and then shook himself out of it and pointed. “And, look, I think there’s actual presents under the tree.”

“Ooh!” she exclaimed, grabbing his hand and dragging him off again.

He’d have followed her anywhere, but the hand-holding was a definite bonus.

Stockings full of coal

A few days before the Christmas party of 2005, a conversation with Pam somehow came around to a mention of Katy, and Pam didn’t so much ask, but the question was written all over her face.

“Oh, yeah, no, um… that just – that hasn’t really been happening lately. Uh, for a while. I don’t know, it just… fizzled, you know?”

“Right, yeah, I know. That happens sometimes, I guess.” Pam’s response was just as awkward as his explanation, and she quickly turned the conversation towards the topic of pros and cons of sticky tack versus double sided tape as a means of sticking all of the paperwork from Dwight’s desk to the wall.

It had clearly been the worst timing, ever, for that conversation – the Katy conversation, not the Dwight conversation – because apparently while the ‘fizzling’ had been obvious from Jim’s perspective, Katy hadn’t quite picked up on it, and a package arrived with his name on it a mere hour after he talked to Pam.

The card was one of those little ones that you just stick on and don’t close, so even though Pam wasn’t actively trying to invade his privacy, the little note of Merry Christmas, Love, Katy, was hard to miss when she was signing for it.

When he took it from her, he tried to explain, but he didn’t know exactly what he was explaining, and all that came out was, “Look, um, you know, this isn’t… what I said earlier…” before she cut him off with an equally awkward, “No, don’t… you don’t have to, um,” accompanied by a shrug and a shake of her head and a look that was a cross between a cringe and her smokescreen “everything is cool here” face.

She walked back to her desk and he wanted to follow her, to really explain, but he thought it would look even worse if he were obviously trying to cover this up when he technically had no reason to explain to the girl who was just his friend why he was receiving a gift from the girl he was maybe kind of seeing. He just couldn’t stand the thought that she would think that he’d been lying before, because what message would that be sending? I’m covering up the fact that I’m seeing someone because I’m so full of myself that I think you’d get jealous and I want to ‘protect’ you. Or maybe, I want to appear available if there’s even the slightest chance you’ll look my way, even though I’m technically still seeing this other girl, but hey, I can juggle! Obviously, he didn’t think Pam would really think he meant either of those things, but right now, he didn’t have the slightest clue what she was thinking.

In the end, he did nothing at all, and simply proceeded with opening his gift in awkward silence under Pam’s watchful, curious gaze. It was a designer shirt that was more suited to Brad Pitt than Jim Halpert, that he would never, ever choose to wear on his own.

But he had to call her to thank her, and in doing so wound up agreeing to see her that night. And now he had to find a gift for Katy before he saw her that evening. And he had to wear the shirt when he saw her too.

…and Pam thought he was a liar. Wonderful.

Stockings full of goodies

One year, Michael had gone a little crazy with the Christmas decorations – there was holly and tinsel everywhere, and they were up as early as Thanksgiving, but it really was having the desired effect of putting them all into the Christmas spirit, no matter how much they tried to remain immune.

He was in the kitchen talking to Pam about… well, honestly, he couldn’t remember even thirty seconds later what he’d been talking about, but he remembered thinking that it actually wasn’t particularly funny when she turned to him in the middle of his sentence and giggled.

She stepped towards him, so close he inhaled sharply, and then stopped breathing altogether when she placed her hands on both his shoulders and leaned up to press her lips gently to his left cheek. The whole motion had to have taken barely a second, but Jim felt as if the moment passed by in slow motion until she stepped back with a bright smile and his lungs seemed to remember how to push air in and out again.

“Mistletoe,” she explained, still grinning, and pointed to the foliage hanging above his head before practically skipping out of the kitchen and back towards reception.

Jim was tingling down to his toes for the entire remainder of his day and didn’t make a single sale.

Stockings full of coal

Jim’s last Christmas in the office, Michael walked right by him with the bag of names for Secret Santa.

“Whoa, Michael, hey. When do I get to pick?”

“You know, Jim, I don’t really think you should be picking a name, since your name’s not in here, and if you picked, then we’d have one person who wasn’t buying for anyone, and that’s just no fun,” Michael snapped.

Jim gave an incredulous look across to the reception desk out of habit, and received a blank look from Cindy. Pam had quit months ago.

“And why – exactly – is my name not in there?” Jim pressed, even though Michael seemed done with him and was moving on towards accounting.

“Well, because,” Michael explained in the most condescending voice he could muster. “You’re leaving us in January and I didn’t think it was very fair to expect someone to spend their hard earned money to give a nice present to someone who’s not even going to be here to say thank you after a week or so.”

“I’d… say thank you… when I opened it…”

“Yeah, like that’d make anyone feel better,” Michael muttered as he marched over to hold out the bag to Cindy.

“Whoa, okay, so how come Cindy’s picking? She’s leaving like a week after me.” Jim couldn’t explain why he wasn’t just letting this go. It wasn’t like he actually cared if he got a present from someone in the office; it just felt weird to be excluded from this one ritual right before he was going to be gone for good and was actually feeling sentimental about his time here.

“Because! Jim! Because, Cindy is a temp,” – one of several temps who had been covering reception until they could find someone permanent, which Michael seemed to have given up on – “and a temp, by definition, is here temporarily, and we need to be welcoming to our guests in the short amount of time that they are with us, which means treating them like family. Unlike you, who was offered a place in this family for forever, and is just spitting on that to go be a freaking middle school teacher or something.”

“Michael…” Jim’s voice turned low and comforting. He knew where this was coming from – he just wished he could make Michael understand…

“Don’t. You know what, Jim? I don’t even want to hear it, so don’t bother.” Michael pulled the last name out of the bag for himself, looked at it, gave a sigh filled with disgust, and stormed into his office, closing the door behind him.

On the actual day of the gift exchange, Jim moved to sit with the rest of the employees only to once again be rebuffed by Michael.

“Actually, Jim, since you’re not participating, it’d be a little weird for you to be here, so why don’t you just take a breather and go somewhere else.” Jim raised his hands in surrender and began to move away. “Actually, you know what? How about you just sit at your desk and get some work done – make yourself useful to us while you still can.”

“Michael,” Toby started in a warning tone.

“Just… shut it, Toby. Shut. It.”

“It’s okay,” Jim reassured Toby, and walked over to his desk. He tried to tune out the voices as he played Spider Solitaire and started a mental countdown till the New Year.

Stockings full of goodies

When the party was actually getting into full swing, Pam walked into the office and approached him with a smile.

Michael gave a loud snort of disgust. “You could have mentioned you were bringing a guest.”

Jim looked from Pam to Michael and said, “I thought we could all bring guests.”

“Well, yeah, but it would be nice if you’d given a definite yes or no so we could have known about numbers and stuff, and how many sodas to supply.”

Jim looked at the pile of fifty or so cans of soda and blinked. “Well, Kevin was planning on bringing Stacy and now she can’t make it so… we break even.”

Michael rolled his eyes. “Yeah, whatever. Like that’s how it works.”

He retreated into his office and Pam turned to Jim with wide, partly confused, partly amused eyes. “What’s with him?”

Jim shook his head in annoyance. “Do you remember the mood he was in during the last few weeks leading up to the day you left?”

“Yeah,” she nodded understandingly, and then leaned up to whisper in his ear. “But do you remember how you cheered me up when we got home every night after he was a particular pain in the ass?”

Jim scrunched up his face, pretending to be struggling to recall. “You know… I think I have vague memories of that, but you might have to remind me.”

“Oh, I will. Tonight, it’s your turn, I promise,” Pam replied with a teasing grin.

At that moment, Michael stepped out of his office again, looked directly at them and let out a frustrated huff of a breath before turning right back around and closing the door again – as if he’d expected them to have left in those few seconds.

Pam sighed. “You know what? I’m going to try one better. Hold on.”

“Pam, what…?” He asked as she began walking away from him towards Michael’s office. She looked back over her shoulder and gave a shrug and a dismissive wave, as if to say ‘It doesn’t hurt to try.’

She knocked lightly, opened the door, and walked inside, closing it again behind her.

Two minutes later, she walked out and gave him a little thumbs-up and a grin, followed by Michael who was holding a plastic bag.

Michael walked straight over to him, with an almost bashful little smile, and held up the bag. “So, I was… I was going to wait and give this to you on your last day. But it’s Christmas and all, and Christmas is a time for giving, so… here.” He held out the bag to Jim. “It’s not wrapped, but…”

“That’s okay,” Jim said, hardly believing the change. He looked up at Pam who gave an innocent shrug and smile. He opened the bag to find a box containing a mug with big bold letters: World’s Best Employee.

“Wow.” Jim smiled at Michael. “Thank you… so much. It means a lot. You know, I am going to miss it here. Me leaving… it’s nothing to do with you. It’s just–”

“I know,” Michael cut him off, genuinely beginning to tear up. “You don’t have to – she said. She said it all.”

“Oh! Okay. Cool,” Jim responded, looking at Pam curiously yet again.

Michael gave him an affectionate pat on the shoulder and moved away to talk to Ryan.

Pam walked back over to him with a grin. “So?”

“Okay, what did you say to him?” Jim threw an arm around her waist and looked at her in awe.

“Hey, let me keep some mystery going here,” she grinned, and he poked her side in mock annoyance. “Just… years of experience in calming down Michael. And in this case, you know, he was never really mad to begin with, so… it was easier.”

“You’re magical.”

“Well, obviously.”

He leaned back a bit and looked at her curiously. “So do I still get… special treatment this evening?”

“Well, I don’t know! I mean, I did just do all that work to fix the problem,” upon Jim’s exaggerated pout, she continued, “so maybe like, I get special treatment for a little while, and then you get special treatment for a little while…”

“Nice compromise. I like it. I’m in.”

“Oh!” She looked up and grinned. “Hey, mistletoe.”