There's a night every year when it finally gets cold enough. The heat kicks on for the first time, somebody drags the boxes down from the attic, and the living room fills up with tangled light strings and the smell of pine. Before the tree is even standing, you've already changed into the warmest thing you own.
This is the tree that night was building toward, rebuilt in chunky pixel art like it just booted up on a game console. Old-school bulbs in red, orange, yellow, green and blue, silver garland looped around the branches, and a gold star that isn't trying too hard, with HOLIDAY MODE underneath in red-and-green title-screen lettering.
I made it for the cozy half of the season: the movie marathons, the slow mornings, the second cup of coffee by the window. Pull it on in December and don't take it off until the new year.
