1. By Christmas time, the paralyzing awkwardness between Jim and Pam had dwindled. They started talking again on lunch breaks, and Pam even helped Jim plan a few pranks on Dwight, just like old times. But Jim was still dating Karen, and  Pam thought that if she couldn't tell Jim how she felt about him, she still wanted to get him something for Christmas that would truly be something only the two of them would understand. Something that would subtly tell him that he was still on her mind. She suddenly knew how he had felt those previous years when he took any opportunity he could get to hint to her how he felt about her without actually telling her.

The Christmas party went just about how it had the previous year, with 'Secret Santa' turning into 'Yankee Swap' despite many protestations, with Michael running around with a lampshade on his head, and with Packer passed out on Dwight's desk.

After 'Yankee Swap', Pam observed the party from her desk, not really in the mood to get drunk with her co-workers. She sat quietly, observing and sketching what she saw while she worked up the nerve to give Jim his Christmas present. Finally, when she'd had enough of it all and just wanted to go home and get into her pajamas and catch a cheesy Christmas movie on TV, she got up, slipped a regular card-sized envelope into Jim's messenger bag, and then snuck out of the party unnoticed. When she got to her car, she sent Jim a text message telling him to make sure he looked in his bag for the gift.

Later that night, when Jim was alone, he read Pam's text message again, and pulled the envelope out of his bag. He looked at the way she had neatly written his name on the envelope before slipping his finger under the flap to open it carefully. He took out a piece of card stock. On it was a colored pencil drawing of what was unmistakeably the two of them playing poker together on Casino Night. At the bottom center of the drawing, Pam had written "All in" in small letters.

Jim sat in his living room, in the dim light of the Christmas tree, processing the full meaning of her words.

***

2. Jim and Karen had broken up a couple of weeks before Christmas. Since then, the bond between Jim and Pam started to heal at a quicker pace than it had before. Things were almost back to the way they had been before Casino Night, which made both of them even more gun shy to say something to the other and ruin that. Michael, who had said that he wanted people "makin' out under the mistletoe!" this year (throwing in a not-to-subtle wink at Jim and a gesture to Pam), had hung up mistletoe in just about every doorway in the office. Kisses occurred between the most disturbing pairs underneath those sprigs of misletoe. Michael would yell out the names of whoever was under one together, and not shut up until they kissed- Meredith and Kelly, Creed and Phyllis, Oscar and Stanley... Jim seemed to be avoiding the mistletoe at all costs, as not to have to kiss Andy, or worse- Dwight, he'd told Pam. But Pam secretly tried her best to get Jim underneath the mistletoe with her. She knew he'd be humiliated if Michael caught them and forced them to kiss in front of the whole office, so she had a plan. Late one afternoon, while everyone started trickling out for the day. She discreetly dropped a note on Jim's desk. "Stairwell," it said.

In the stairwell, Jim found another folded piece of paper taped to the wall that said, "Corolla. :o) " He smiled and wondered what she was up to. He got outside to his car to find not Pam, but yet another note taped to the driver's side door. It said, "'kitchen." He sighed, and went back inside, taking the stairs two at a time, not wanting to wait for the elevator. When he got back up in the office, it was empty. Everyone had left by the time he'd finished his little scavenger hunt. He went into the kitchen, and there stood Pam instead of another note. He held up the notes to her, raising his eyebrows and smirking slightly as if to ask, "What was this all about, Beesley?" She opened the door on the opposite side of the kitchen that lead to the other side of the office, walked partway through it, stopped when she knew Jim was close behind, and then turned around. He raised his eyebrows even higher. "What-" he started, and shook his head a little. She just smiled and pointed up above and in between them at the hanging sprig of mistletoe.

"Oh," he said. He looked back down at her slowly. She could see his mind working- all his hesitations and questions. Was this just a game? A kiss from a friend? Was it meant to be more? When she recognized the glint of hope in his eyes, she nodded slightly with her eyes searching his. She heard his breath catch, and he reached his hand out to place it lightly, hesitantly at her hip. She finally leaned into him, placed her hand on his chest, and kissed him- a sweet, lingering, lip kiss. She felt his fingers dig into her flesh a little where his hand was curled around her hip, and she sighed, pulling back from him to place her forehead on his.

"Merry Christmas, Jim," she said with her eyes closed, content and happy.

Wordlessly, he thanked her with another kiss.

***

3. By Christmas, things were still pretty awkward bewtween Pam and Jim. They still didn't talk like they used to. He never came up to her desk anymore just to chat- her jellybean container hadn't had to be refilled in months. They ate lunch at the same time in the break room, but never sat next to each other, and always sat with three or four others at the same time. Pam assumed Jim didn't have feelings for her anymore, and at first, she did a lot of crying over it when she was alone- feeling regret that she'd turned him down so completely in the first place, and then regret that she had waited in silence, never telling him of her broken engagement, and then being naiive enough to think things would just fall into place when he returned to Scranton.

Though things were cold between them, they did talk once in a while. They had caught up with each other's lives- what they'd missed while they were three states away from each other. She had told him about her apartment, and her art classes, and he seemed genuinely happy for her for finally persuing something she loved, for taking the advice he'd tried to give her months earlier.

But she knew, or thought she knew, anyway, that he no longer even condsidered her a best friend, forget thinking of her as anything more. So when Christmas time came around, she hadn't really thought of getting him anything for Christmas, as things were still so chilly between them.

At the office Christmas party, when it was Pam's turn to open her Secret Santa gift, she tore the paper off to reveal a beautuful slim wooden box. She curiously opened it to find rows of drawing supplies- artist pencils of different hardnesses from 2B up to 2H, a kneaded eraser, grayscale pastels, a box of soft vine charcoal, compressed charcoal, and a charcoal pencil. She knew her eyes were wide with wonder. She knew this gift was probably worth three or four times the twenty dollars they were supposed to spend, and she had a hunch about who had been her Secret Santa. She glanced over at Jim, who she found gazing at her with an unreadable look on his face. "Wow, thank you, Secret Santa, whoever you are," she said, glancing around the room quickly, and then focusing back on Jim. "I love it."

Later on, when the party was in full swing, Pam was sitting in the kitchen, looking at her new art kit. She remembered that when she told Jim about her art classes, she had told him that she was thinking of taking a class on charcoal, because it was a medium she loved in high school, but hadn't experimented with it since then.

"Glad you like the gift, Beesley." Pam looked up to find Jim standing over her, hands in his pockets, wearing that smile that she hadn't seen since he'd come back, and her breath hitched in her throat.

"Oh, I love it," she finally breathed after a beat. Jim sat down next to her, and she continued, "You're lucky that no one else here has any knowledge about art and therefore they have no idea how expensive this must have been. You were in great danger of setting off another Yankee Swap this year, had you been found out."

He laughed. "I was willing to risk it."

Pam looked at him again, ready to burst with the happiness that things were suddenly thawing out between them. Jim hadn't been that close to her since he had first arrived back from Stamford and had returned her hug before putting all of his walls up. Their eyes lingered for a few moments until Jim said, "So, tell me about all this stuff. What's up with all these different pencils? And why do you need two kinds of charcoal?"

Pam smiled widely. They spent the rest of the Christmas party alone in the kitchen huddled over Pam's new art kit.

***

4. It was Jim and Pam's second Christmas together as a married couple. They sat under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, a huge pile of presents was stacked beneath it. On their first Christmas together, they had established a tradition- they would open all presents from each other on Christmas morning, except for one- on Christmas Eve, they would each open one gift, chosen by the gifter.

Pam thrust an envelope at Jim to open.

"A card, Pam?" he asked laughing. "You get to open this little velvet box," he gestured to the box he held in his right hand, "and I just get a card?"

"Come on Jim, just open it," she said, seriously.

"I was just kidding," he said, noting her serious tone, and taking the envelope from her. He opened it carefully, and pulled out what looked like a black and white photo. He looked at it closely, and felt his heart start to beat faster.

"Oh, Pam, is this- are you-?" he looked up at her and she was smiling wider than he had ever seen her smile, and she was practically bouncing up and down where she was sitting. She nodded slowly.

He grabbed her hand, and pulled her up with him as he stood, and then engulfed her in a huge hug. "Is it a boy or a girl?" he asked, and his voice came out in a whisper.

"They can't tell yet, it's too soon!" she said, her voice full of laughter and emotion as she pulled back from him a little. He saw tears shining in her eyes to match the ones her knew were in his.

He pulled her into a hug again, and murmured into her neck, "Best Christmas present ever."

***

5. At Christmas time, the office building plays satellite-broadcast Christmas music over their sound system, starting the week after Thanksgiving. Pam loves Chrsitmas, and every year, she really gets into the Christmas spirit the first week or so that they begin to play the music. But by the second week, Pam and Jim start thinking up outrageous ideas on how to make the music stop, including elaborate suicide plans. One year, the day before Christmas Eve, Pam came out of the kitchen to find Jim leaving early.

"Aww, music finally driving you away?"

He laughed. "No, I'm leaving tonight to visit my family for the holidays."

"Cool," she said. "Have a good Christmas."

"You too, Beesly," he said with a smile.

After he left, Pam went to sit down at her desk, and she found a small wrapped gift there, with a Christmas card. She opened the envelope, and found a card with a couple of silly-looking penguins on the front, and inside was Jim's messy handwriting:

Pam,
Here's some music that will hopefully not make you want to fling yourself from the top floor of the building.
Have a good Christmas.
-Jim

She unwrapped the gift to find a "mixtape" CD that Jim had made. He had written the artist and song names on the CD with a Sharpie- most of them, she'd never heard of. She smiled as she opened up the jewelcase, and inserted the CD into the CD-ROM of her computer, then unplugged her headphones from the MP3 player in her purse, and inserted them into the headphone jack on her computer. The music that filled the earphones made her instantly think of Jim, and she closed her eyes for a second, smiling to herself.