"Now, the heroes in Camp Half-Blood liked Christmas a lot.

But Mr. D, who watched over those heroes, did not.

Mr. D hated Christmas, the whole Christmas season!

Now please, don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason."

"Austin, you're a genius!" Kayla giggled madly, passing Austin's notebook around the cabin.

"It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight," Fret recited brightly.

"It could be that his head wasn't screwed on quite right," Lennon continued with a grin.

"But I think," Lindi chimed in, "The most likely reason of all may have been that his heart-"

"Was too sizes-"

"Too small!" The entire cabin chorused.

"Whose heart is too small?" Silena Beauregard asked from the doorway.

"Shhh," Will warned, "we're reading The God Who Stole Christmas."

"Isn't it The Grinch Who Stole Christmas?" Silena cocked her head.

Austin grinned. "Not in my version."

Silena shook her head with a smile. "I guess they call you Dr. Seuss for a good reason."

Noticing Silena's clipboard for the first time, Lee asked, "Are we clean enough?" Silena pulled a pencil out of her pocket and scribbled something on the paper.

"Not bad," she said, "better than Hermes."

The Apollo kids groaned. "Everyone's better than Hermes!" Michael complained. Silena winked, and left the cabin.

"Well, at least we're not the worst," Will pointed out, looking at the sheet music and staff paper strewn all over the floor.

"You would say that, Sunny Jim," Kayla rolled her eyes.

"Oh, shut up, Princess."

"Go on, Chiron!" Michael called. The centaur was standing at the head table with a Santa hat in his hand. "Put it on!"

Chiron sighed. He put the furry hat on his head and crossed his arms. "Ho. Ho. Ho," he said in a flat voice, as everyone cracked up.

"Go Chiron!" Joey shouted from table seven. Fret and Chord stood and started to clap. Soon, all of the Apollo kids were giving their director a standing ovation.

"And now, we sing!" Will announced to the resrt of the camp, who groaned. He made a few signals to his cabin mates and they burst into a four-part choral arrangement of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

"Christmas," Mr. D huffed derisively from table twelve, "is a useless holiday. I don't see the point in getting all worked up over holly and shiny paper."

"Well, now we know who the father of Ebenezer Scrooge is," Lennon muttered to Harmony and Melody, who sighed. "Don't be such a Grinch, Mr. D! For the sake of the season!"

"Bah," the god responded, "humbug."

Lennon threw up his hands in a what did I tell you? gesture.

"Then he growled," Austin narrated dramatically, "with his god-fingers nervously drumming-"

"'I must find a way to stop Christmas from coming!'" Kayla continued. "But the Grinch got better in the end. I have a feeling that Mr. D won't be too inclined to carve the roast beast."

"It's ruining the holiday mood," Fret sighed sadly, pushing her last piece of French toast absently around her plate. "We have to fix this."

"Why are we always the ones that have to keep the damn camp happy?" Jack complained.

"Because we're usually the only happy people in the camp," Harmony rolled her eyes. "Forever condemned to be the hopeful rays of sunshine. Literally."

"But we can't let Mr. D steal our Christmas!" Will said with finality. "We need a plan."

Fret's eyes lit up. Shoving a Santa hat over her short gold curls, she said: "Operation Save Cristmas is now underway."

For the next few days, the entire camp was bursting with the spirit of Christmas. Demeter's kids grew poinsettias outside their cabin, and mistletoe seemed to mysteriously pop up under every doorway. No one was safe; Aphrodite must have been working overtime. Travis and Katie were caught in the stables, Luke gave little Annabeth a kiss on the Big House porch, and -to the delight of his siblings- Will finally managed to work up the nerve to kiss Laura, his long time crush from Athena, with some help from a clump of mistletoe in the weapons shed.

Somehow -though not surprisingly- Aphrodite's cabin was decorated as the world's largest Tiffany & Co. gift box. The smokestack on the Hepheastus cabin puffed green and red smoke. Even the Ares cabin pitched in, wrapping colorful lights around their barbed wire fences. But all the decorations in the world couldn't stop Mr. D's cynical outlook.

"It's such a noisy holiday," he complained loudly on the morning of the twenty-fourth. "They're just presents. No need to get sooo excited."

"'They're hanging their stockings,'" Austin continued his story, "he snarled with a sneer. 'Tomorrow is Christmas. It's practically here!'"

Kayla sighed, as if reciting The Iliad instead of a Dr. Seuss poem, "For tomorrow he knew, all the demigod girls and boys would wake bright and early and rush for their toys-" she cut herself off, eyes wide. "That's it!"

"What's it?" Chord asked.

"Maybe that's all we need. Let's give Mr. D a gift!"

Half the table stared at her incredulously.

"It's worth a shot," Lindi chirped.

Michael's face lit up. "I got this horrible pair of fuzzy purple socks that i really need to get rid of. Get a box, some wrapping paper, stick a bow on the top, and we're done!"

So that night, while everyone else was doing last minute gift wrapping, Kayla made her way to the Big House, wrapped socks in hand.

"Mr. D?" She asked tentatively, stepping into the office.

"What do you want, Caylee?" Mr. D snapped, eyeing the glittering purple box. Kayla held it out to him, a look of apprehension on her face.

"We thought you might like them, sir," she said. "Merry Cristmas."

The god huffed and snatched the package out of her hands.

"Go to bed, Cora," he ordered, "and don't let me see you up this late again!"

Christmas morning came around, and the squeals and laughter of the campers could probably be heard across the Long Island Sound. Fret had just unwrapped a full vocal score of Les Miserables when she noticed a small purple post-it on the corner of her bed.

"You guys," she called to her siblings, "look at this."

The note was short: Thank you for the socks.

"Well damn," Michael commented. "Who knew it would work?"

"In more ways than one!" Lindi cried from the window. she wiped the fog away and pointed outside. "It's snowing!"

It was, without a doubt, the best Christmas they ever had.

And what happened then? Well, in camp they all say that Mr. D's small heart grew three sizes that day...