Holidays weren't something he and his brother tended to celebrate. Not like normal folks celebrated them, anyway. It was a pattern that started after Mom got killed. Dad mostly fell out of the habit of celebrating the holidays. Dean figured it was 'cause he couldn't bring himself to celebrate things that were about family.

Not when their family got eviscerated by that yellow-eyed son of a bitch, Azazel.

They did manage to celebrate a couple of Christmases when they were kids. Dean recalled the Christmas with the plastic tree, stockings full of candy, footballs, and the plastic army men Sam stuck in the heater vents and ashtrays of Baby. And there was that one Christmas when Sam was eight. He got his most treasured item that year: his amulet.

Granted, he tossed the amulet away once in a fit of anger. Things were crazy then. They were trying to stop a bag of dicks from nuking the planet in some heavenly scheme to mold whatever survived into some freaking sorta Utopia. He took the amulet back once he discovered Sam had it. He didn't wear it around his neck as he used too, but it was never far from him.

The point was, life wasn't perfect. Dad wasn't perfect. Things weren't as bad as Sammy tended to make them sound, though. Sure, things like celebrating holidays weren't important unless they were somehow tied to whatever Dad was hunting.

Sure, if Dad wasn't off on a hunt or following some trail that might lead him to the thing that killed Mom, he was typically passed out in whatever cheap motel he parked them in.

And yeah, he was usually too drunk, beat up or tired to worry about things like cooking them holiday dinners or putting up decorations.

Dad did his best.

He wasn't the ideal father. Dean admitted that… now. He didn't do the normal stuff Dads did with their kids. He didn't play ball in the backyard, help them with homework, help build science fair projects or give those Ward Cleaver kinda talks. He wasn't the kind of father Dean often wanted or needed. He could recall plenty of times where he reached out to Dad for help or emotional support and he wasn't there for him.

There were plenty of times he reached out to Sam for the same things and his brother wasn't there for him, too.

Like those four years his brother spent at Stanford. Sammy didn't send one text, email or so much as one letter in all the time he attended the university. Dean suspected that if he hadn't gone to get his brother when he did, and Jess not have gotten killed like Mom that Sam would have graduated from Stanford, gotten married, and had kids without once letting him or Dad know.

Dean swallowed his bitterness along with the remaining ounces of beer at the bottom of the bottle he opened a few minutes ago. What good was there reminiscing about the past? Dad became the kind of father he felt they needed. The world they lived in wasn't a good one. Monsters were everywhere.

He did what he thought best to protect them.

He taught us that family is everything, Dean thought as he tossed the empty bottle into the wastebasket beside his bed. He showed us that when it comes to family, you stop at nothing. You do what needs be done.

He and Sam had sacrificed themselves for the other plenty over the years.

Celebrating Christmas with Dad became something of a luxury when they were growing up. If they got lucky, and it wasn't often they did since Dad had a need to keep them close to him when they were really young, he'd leave them with Pastor Jim or Bobby for Christmas. Those were rare exceptions, though.

Christmas typically found him and Sammy digging into a box of Lucky Charms or splitting a can of SpaghettiOs that Dean would heat in either a microwave or on a stove. If we were lucky and the room had a microwave or stove, he thought as he stared up at the water-stained ceiling and listened to How the Grinch Stole Christmas on the television.

Most often they were lucky if there was a fully stocked vending machine he could rip off. A smirk crooked his lips up at the corners as he remembered a few of his more profitable heists. Man, I used to make us a helluva snack mix out of pretzels, plain potato chips, and bags of peanut M&Ms.

There was one year where they got to celebrate both Thanksgiving and Christmas with Dad. It was the only time he could say with absolute certainty that the Winchesters enjoyed a real, happy Christmas. A smile curved his lips as the Grinch lamented, "And they'll feast, feast, feast, feast. They'll eat their Who-Pudding and rare Who-Roast Beast. But that's something I just cannot stand in the least…" in the background.

I wonder if Sam remembers that Christmas. He had only been four at the time. It was possible his brother had forgotten everything that happened that Christmas. He never mentioned it in all the times they discussed Christmas. Dad blacked out the entry he made in his journal about Christmas. For obvious reasons, he thought as the Grinch continued his tirade against the people of Whoville.

The last entry he made was dated November 2nd and was about Mom. About him asking what she looked like. Dad didn't have any pictures of her since everything they owned pretty much got destroyed the night of the fire. The only one with any recollection at all of what happened after the second was him.

They might not have celebrated either Thanksgiving or Christmas with Dad if not for everything that occurred the night before Thanksgiving and afterward. Wasn't like things started off weird. No, things were pretty normal really. Sure, Dad had to pick him up from school because he mouthed off to his teacher and got suspended for it. Wasn't like that was anything unusual.

Not that year, anyway.

Wasn't like he wouldn't have had to leave school early. Dad caught wind of a case up near Superior, Minnesota and packed them into the Impala to go and investigate it. They ended up in some motel outside Duluth. The post-hunt adrenaline that kept Dad going while he tracked down a skinwalker killing his former classmates for bullying him throughout high school had run out. He had needed to stop for a good night's sleep before they headed to either Bobby's or Pastor Jim's and the next hunt.

They got checked in just as a big snowstorm blew into the area. Dad left him and Sammy to check out the room while he used the phone to let Bobby know the skinwalker job was done. That was when Bobby told him about some strange stuff happening up at some old mansion recently converted into some fancy bed and breakfast. Guests of the place were drowning in Lake Superior. Officers were stumped. The usual jazz.

Of course, Dad agreed to look into it since they were close by. Said it sounded like a ghost or poltergeist. An easy enough job. Looking back, Dean still didn't see anything out of the ordinary about the job. Standard, salt and burn Lady What's Her Name's bones to put an end to her drowning people in the lake that surrounded the property.

Should have taken Dad a night to take care of things, tops. Hours' drive there, couple hours to dig up the old lady and take care of her remains, hours' drive back to their crappy motel.

Easy peasy.

Only, Bobby hadn't known who the old lady had selected as her last victim.

Or why.

A/N: Hello, all, and Happy Holidays! Clearing up the legal, I don't own anything here but for my own original idea. The rest belongs to the wonderful folk behind Supernatural. I promise to return all characters in a slightly used but very happy condition.

Just as a matter of reference, you can loosely tie the current events happening in the opening and ending of this story to before the events of season 14x09. I'm fudging the timeline a little since it's not always easy to track down when events are happening.

There are seven chapters in total to this story, so I will be posting one every day until Christmas. Please, if you like it, follow/favorite it!