Addendum

For those of you thinking it might be time to complete fewer sidequests, first, you won't, second, strive for excellence in everything you do.

For those of you wondering why it's "sidequests" in the text but "side quests" in the tags, it's because of the demon sealed between the "e" and the "q." Sadly, the tags have long since embraced chaos.

Reasonable Goals

I know what you're thinking. "My new year's resolution will be to do all the sidequests!" No, you won't. Try to complete more sidequests instead.

The New Year Always Rings Twice

I won my way into the room with two honest items, my face and my money. Private security would have been less interested in demonstrations of virtue than the building staff, but Viranz's men were spread all over the city, looking innocent, or at least guilty in an orthodox way. The seventh-story room had a peerless view of the arena. I'd known that before I came in. It also had oddities on every flat surface, just what the public would expect from the eccentric collector Viranz presented himself as being. I had girded myself with detailed descriptions of certain items, and I found one: Tarmenbi's Wonderfully Efficacious Queasiness Caster.
"Do you think it will work?"
I spun around. There was Viranz, grinning, and one of his boys, grinning even wider. He had a big face. It went with his big fists.
"I don't see why it wouldn't," I conceded. "Which is why you won't use it. There's no point in rigging the annual fight between Old Year and New Year."
"There's a point to winning bets with outrageous odds, isn't there?"
"But you won't see another year to spend it in."
"I suppose I'll have to get used to living as a rich man in this one."
A discourse on temporal philosophy didn't have much promise in it, and I wanted to catch the match (after getting Viranz turned in of course). Aside from a description, I'd gotten instructions too. I used the Queasiness Caster on the heavy and waited for it to be wonderfully efficacious, which it wasn't, and for Viranz to surrender himself, which he didn't. Those preventive measures I hadn't bothered to listen about were making themselves known.
I was in a tight spot. Whether I got out of it or not, well, wait and see if there's another year.
Finis

Addendum

"We don't have to get a real tree this year. Also I was thinking about going to bed early on the 31st." - future prison inmates

Legal Clarification

It is now illegal to play or listen to Christmas music. That is, in your science fiction setting where future nations try to unify populations flung across planets and space stations by enforcing a universal culture right down to standardizing colors for book covers (military scifi has a diamond pattern).

Merry Christmas!

See title.

Vital Worldbuilding Concern

The paramount consideration when crafting your new property must be this: "How many Magic: The Gathering cards can be made out of this?" That's where the real money is.

Profound Christmas Question

Could the reason for falling fertility around the world be Santa? He's afraid he can't keep up. If so, has he been sabotaging efforts to leave our little world? The second doesn't necessarily follow from the first, of course. He may intend a franchise once space colonization is accomplished.

A Christmas Saga

A young man shuffled along beneath disorderly seasonal lights which lent character to flat streets and sidewalks distinguished for most of the year by imperfect conditions alone, cracks and weeds and a chip broken off. One might imagine them to have pools and depressions.
"With all the classics and specials, you'd think I'd have some idea what the true meaning of Christmas is." His thoughts were something like that, though not so organized; in that at least his state comported with the environment.
Just then, he vanished and appeared before a council of mystical adepts who said, "Aid us! Free us from the Three Christmas Terrors. Only someone from another world where the season is as it should be can do it. The first is a rider of a sleigh swifter than slander who corrects the count of every chimney that the taxes might be made more oppressive. The second is the chorus whose carols cause madness, nor is their thirst appeased till the house has nothing left for those who live there. The third is the tribe of butchers whose duty is to hang heads from every tree in Browngird Forest."
The young man did exactly that, and in so doing he discovered the truth of Christmas in search and struggle. Never again, when he was returned to his world, did he neglect a quest for the perfect present or quail when invited to watch a seasonal movie for the fifth time that year.
Finis

Addendum

I know it's hard, but please resist splitting into factions over whether that's the only one who speaks Egyptian or if the others all do so perfectly. The world has seen enough strife.