“There’s not enough snow on the ground for that right now,” I remind him, jerking my chin toward the window. We had a warm afternoon, so most of it’s melted.

“Oh, that can be fixed.” With a flourish of his hand, snow begins to cascade from the sky, sticking to the panes. Hall tugs on his collar, and the reindeer tie he copied from the weatherman loops itself around his neck. “Expect a foot by morning.”

“You can control the weather?” My eyes light up. “Make tornadoes?”

He cuts me a narrow look. “Why would you even think about tornadoes? Why does that occur to you? I wish nice things would occur to you.”

“I don’t.”

Hall snaps back to his list. Somewhere in the background, Perry Como begins to sing: Ohhh, there’s no place like hooome for the holidaaayyys. The melody seems to be emanating from the window itself. “Build a fort. Feed some birds! Throw a party. Do a one-thousand-piece puzzle. More birds! Repair your relationships with your family.”

I snap to attention. “What?”

“Make a time capsule. Watch every Christmas movie. Drink hot cocoa until we’re sick. Drink hot cocoa in front of birds. Bake cookies.”

“Some of these sound unnecessary. Like the family part, and baking cookies. Why do we need to bake cookies if we can simply conjure some?”

He reels back in offense. “Baking cookies is a tenet of the season.”

“How about,” I counter, ripping the top sheet from his legal pad and tearing it into ribbons, “tomorrow we conjure up that green dinosaur from Toy Story, life-sized, except Athena’s the only one who can see and hear it. Then we watch her freak out.”

Hall reassembles the torn pieces of his itinerary, smoothing them back into their prior arrangement. “Bettie.”

“Deadpool. Let’s put Deadpool in the dining room, trying to engage whoever passes by in a game of charades. Athena’s the only one who can’t see him.”

He jams a hand into his hair, tugging slightly. “We can’t do that.”

What a spoilsport. “Because you’re so set on doing Christmas stuff?”

“No, because Deadpool isn’t public domain. And we’re not doing Christmas stuff, we’re doing holiday stuff.” He telekinetically opens the closet door and shoves it full of the presents we left in the red pickup, then shuts it. “I’m the Holiday Spirit.”

“Looking pretty Christmassy in here to me.” I spread my hands at the decorations slowly eating the guest room: He’s got a real thing for red vintage pickup trucks with felled evergreen trees in the cab. Wall hangings, fresh cut from the farm embroidered pillowcases. Every time I blink, the collection grows.

“Sixty-five percent of my matter has been trapped inside a ceramic gingerbread house cookie jar in the Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe in Disney World since 1996,” he tells me. “Therefore, I’ve been disproportionately exposed to this particular holiday, helpless to resist absorbing its traditions. But only the secular ones, as is my preference. Especially Valentine’s Day—I simply adore Valentine’s Day, because its atmosphere is so nice with all the love and love-declaring and lacy Cupid decorations. Always wished I could physically participate in it, holding one of those bouquets of mixed flowers from the grocery store, and be somebody’s secret admirer. Or have a secret admirer of my own, I haven’t decided which would be better.”