Imagine being a hater of all things Christmas, and then waking up one morning to find yourself trapped in a Hallmark Christmas town. Your only way out is to compete in a cookie baking contest. Your baking partner is your hot high school crush and your competition is your sexier than ever ex.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Iva-Marie Palmer’s Christmas People, which releases on September 30th 2025.
Some people are Christmas people, but Jill Jacobs is most certainly not. She hasn’t been ever since her hometown love broke her heart on Christmas Eve three years ago. After that, Jill moved to L.A. to pursue her dream of becoming a screenwriter. She hasn’t been home in years to avoid her ex, but this winter she finds herself back in drab, suburban Illinois for the holidays.
After one very hazy night, Jill wakes up to a hometown that’s filled with jolly neighbors, covered in pristine white snow, and seasoned with the smell of peppermint. She realizes that this is more than just a bad hangover… she’s stuck in a Heartfelt movie. One set in her town, starring real people from her life, including her family, her high school crush (uber perfect, owns a bakery, and definitely a Christmas Person), and of course, her ex —handsome as ever and now exclusively clad in plaid flannel.
The only way out of this bizarro world is to complete the plot of the movie, including a holiday bake off and a cookie-sweet love story. To get home in time for Christmas, Jill must act out a picture-perfect holiday romance with the one that got away, all while her ex watches on. Fa la la la freaking la….
Chapter Four
CHECKING WEBMD TO FIND OUT IF VISIONS OF SUGARPLUMS ARE FATAL
“And then Santa breaks into your house and leaves you presents!”
My nephew, Henry, has been explaining Santa to me for the last half hour, and between the months of surveillance followed by a night of multiple home invasions, his Santa Claus sounds like he has a lot in common with the Golden State Killer. But Henry is cute and sweet, and as we sit on the floor coloring together, I’m relieved that his company has spared me from having to talk about my job with my parents or my brother and his wife. The only bad thing about sitting on the floor is that Alfredo, my mom’s cat, has easy access to me. He hates me. Every time I reach for a new crayon, he pounces at me and scratches.
Alice stomps in, her feet encased in moon boots my brother says she won’t take off. “It’s a chimney, Henry. He comes down the chimney.”
“We don’t have a chimney!” Henry counters. “He has to break into our house.”
“Santa wouldn’t do that!” Alice swings a foot toward him but topples over before she can make contact.
Henry points his red crayon in her face. “I’m Tiny Tim. I should know what Santa does!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” My brother’s wife, Rachel, jogs in from the kitchen, her braids swinging, and crouches down to mediate the debate happening between her kids. She slips a look at me that suggests I could have broken up this fight instead of curiously watching to see where it was going. “Santa has his ways.”
“I’m hungry,” Alice tells her.
“You just ate two granola bars,” Rachel reminds her.
“We still have the cookies you decorated,” Mom calls from the kitchen.
“Cookies!” Alice and Henry launch themselves up from the floor and almost trample their mom in their race for the cookies. Rachel tries to hide her What the fuck are you thinking with cookies, lady? Expression, but I catch it and try for a sympathetic smile.
“It’s the holidays,” she says resignedly, the way it seems everyone is required to say, as if it’s both an excuse for all indulgences, however ill-advised, and a limbo-esque time period that can only be endured with help from said indulgences.
“Aunt Jill, you have to eat the messy Santa!” Henry calls out to me. The messy Santa is the cookie that both Alice and Henry decorated for me, swirling colors of icing and piling on sprinkles and candies until Santa’s face looked like something Hunter S. Thompson would see on an acid-filled North Pole reporting trip. Also, eating the messy Santa sounds like a particularly lewd sex act, and I start trying to figure out what debasements it would entail, but my private thoughts are interrupted by my dad’s bellow.
“Alfredo, not the tree!” I hear a hiss, and my dad mutters, “Fucking demon cat.”
The cat is inside the tree, finding a way to climb up despite the fact that the branches look crispy and needles fall everywhere. Alfredo yowls as my dad lunges toward him.
“Goddammit, stop scratching, you little monster,” Dad yells. Then to my mom, “Helen, that cat needs an exorcism.”
I should help, but an angry Alfredo is certainly not going to listen to me. I stand up and poke my head out the back door, where Brian is shoveling the walkway to the garage. “You might want to help with this.”
Brian runs up the steps. The good child, always there for his parents. He shoots me a look that says, Couldn’t you do this? and I shake my head no because I’m not touching the situation. Brian slowly approaches Dad. “A fistfight with the cat is not a good idea,” he says.
That’s my cue to back out of the room and into the kitchen, where my niece’s and nephew’s faces are smeared with frosting.
“I get to give it to her!” Alice says.
“No, I do! I made it,” Henry shoots back.
“We both made it!” Alice says. She pulls off one of her moon boots and lobs it at his head.
“And I stepped in yellow snow with that.”
“Dad, Alice threw a pee boot at me!” Henry screams.
“Shit! Dad, the tree!” Brian is shouting in the other room. “It’s tipping! Leave the cat!”
“And take the cannoli.” My dad, like all dads, can’t resist a Godfather reference.
“Not funny! Grab the trunk,” Brian yells. I hear ornaments clinking as the tree shifts. Alfredo issues a scrabbly meow.
I turn back to my niece and nephew, who are egging me on with the gross cookie on a plate between them. “Aunt Jill, eat the messy Santa!”
“Yeah, eat the messy Santa!”
“Don’t copy me. I’m mad at you.” Now Henry kicks Alice.
Rachel leaps in and pulls Henry away from Alice, hoisting him up by the waist. As she does, Alice keeps her grip on the plate, shooting Henry a victorious smirk.
“Henry, we don’t kick our siblings,” Rachel says as she sits him on the counter for a talking-to. Alice skips into the room with the plate, which Rachel takes from her with a stern look. His mom’s ire doesn’t stop Henry from leaning over Rachel’s shoulder and jabbing his pointer finger in the air at me.
“Messy Santa! Messy Santa!” he starts chanting with glee. Alice runs up to stand near her brother and hops from foot to foot, joining in. “Messy Santa! Messy Santa!” She clutches her crotch with both hands and keeps singsonging.
“Alice, maybe you should use the restroom,” I say.
“After you eat the cookie,” she says as she wets her pants.
“Alice!” Now Rachel gives me a look, as if I’m an accomplice to the chaos. I’m almost grateful when my mom hands me a cup of milk and the plate bearing the messy Santa. Somehow oblivious to the noise, the chaos, and the urine she then bends to clean up with a dishrag, she says, “Aren’t they the sweetest things?”
She’s talking about Alice and Henry. Or maybe about the capsules of Christmas Valium she must have popped half a bottle of to be so serene.
“Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!” Henry sings as he hops down from the counter while his mom tries to drag a wet Alice from the kitchen. But then Alice starts up the chant, too, and Rachel death-glares at me, like, Eat the fucking cookie so we’re done with this.
I take a big bite, and the messy Santa tastes exactly like a cookie designed by two sticky children.
I smile at the kids as I choke down the cookie, and to Mom I say, “So sweet,” as Rachel finally succeeds in luring Alice from the room, while Henry follows her, screaming, “Santa saw you pee on the floor!”
“They bring so much joy to the family,” Mom adds.
I cringe. Not because the statement is cringeworthy but because I can feel my mom sneaking a secret message into her comments the same way Brian and Rachel have to puree veggies to hide them in the kids’ mac and cheese. The message is, of course, that I should have a family. That it doesn’t matter if I’m great at my job—or would be great at my
job if I had one—if I don’t seed the world with more of our DNA. Like I said, I never perceive my mom judging anyone, but I’m her daughter and she makes an exception for me.
