It was that time of year again.

The time of year when the Paratroopas decorate the exterior Kastle Koopa with a string of colorful parallel-connected LEDs that glow brighter than the lava pools in the castle's interior.

The time of year when snowflake-shaped decorations became prevalent, even though nobody that had never traveled outside of Dark Land had ever seen a snowflake in the flesh.

The time of year when King Bowser ventured out to the lands where coniferous trees grew on snowy hills year round to chop down one of them and haul it back to his abode, to be propped up and decorated with items both edible and nonedible, lights like those strung outside, and a magical Starman on top.

Such traditions were introduced relatively recently from the Real World. Although at first they seemed bizarre, even insane to many of the Mushroom Universe and especially Dark Land, the Koopa King embraced the Yuletide culture, and had played a tremendous role in popularizing it throughout the lands under the dominion of his empire. The King's love of the holiday season had nothing to do with religion - he was not a religious reptilian, and did not much care or even know about the origins of the holiday called Christmas - or, as he often liked to call it, Koopsmas, since, being the King and a very vain King at that, he was given to agglutinating his own surname to everything.

Bowser just enjoyed the festive decorations - so much red and green, colors that he was very fond of - the music, the infectious feelings of feel-good jolliness and warmth and cheer and nostalgia that spread like the Birdo flu during that time of year, and possibly most of all, the giving and receiving of presents.

It made Bowser feel like a real success as a dad when he saw his children smile when they opened up the presents he got them. He would do just about anything to get his children what they wanted, even if it was something ridiculous; if he had to commit a crime to do it, well, it's a given that the King was no stranger to pilfering, plundering, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, and any other crime that involved taking something or someone that was not his. He also looked forward to the gifts his children made or got for him, most of them being diminutive of course since they were only children after all, but whether it was a hand-scribbled Christmas card from Lemmy or a new arrangement of one of his "theme songs" by Ludwig, it warmed his heart and made him look all the more forward to Koopsmas of next year.

Every year, he asked his children to write letters detailing what they wanted to "Santa". The big secret was that the real Santa never visited his castle; he could count on the Koopalings being too naughty, every single year, to ever make it on Santa's "Nice" list. Santa never even bothered to drop by Kastle Koopa to put coal in their stockings. Fossil fuel after all is too expensive these days, let alone to waste on spoilt rotten little brats.

Bowser of course was Santa, though not without assistance from Kamek and Kammy. Bowser was never seen without the hat in December and he loved wearing the jolly red suit. He loved eating the cookies and milk that his kids left out, and putting presents under the tree and knicknacks in the stockings hanging over the lavaplace. Once he even tried to complete the illusion, or rather delusion by naming his Paratroopas and Paragoombas after the reindeer from one of those Christmas specials that aired on his Real World channels, complete with plastic antlers and a red light-up nose on the Paragoomba in the front, and hitching them up to a sleigh. The entire escapade turned out to be a disaster, so Bowser just stuck to suiting up and skulking around the castle at midnight with a giant goodie bag from then on.

This year, he was checking over the list of things that his children wanted, and making sure that he got them everything that they asked for that was within the range of his abilities to obtain.

Ludwig, the eldest, had extremely refined tastes compared to the rest of the family, and was particularly hard to shop for, but the requests he submitted to his father were usually quite modest, and he was used to receiving most of his fancier fancies from his wealthy Real World relatives anyway. The only thing he had put on his list this year was some hi-technical espresso maker. Being the prodigy in multiple disciplines, engineering and invention included, that Ludwig was, he was quite capable of building one that was just as good if not better on his own, so it was likely that he had only asked for this so that Bowser would not be disappointed that his son did not ask for anything. Kamek was well aware of this, but Bowser was not, so Kamek just allowed him to carry on believing that he really made his eldest son's Koopsmas by granting his somewhat grudging requests.

Bowser had a hard time reading Lemmy's list, which was scribbled with crayon. He had requested one of those bouncy balls that he played with in the grocery store, a barrel full of those colorful balls from the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese's, and "a bunch of those George Washington candys like the kind Ludwig has". Bowser had no idea what Lemmy had meant by the latter request, but the grocery store bouncy ball was easy enough. The Chuck E. Cheese balls were somewhat more difficult to obtain; the manager refused to allow others to purchase the "property of Chuck E. Cheese's", so Bowser had to commit robbery to get them. I'll do even better than this, he thought, and he went and ordered an entirely new bouncy house for Lemmy, since the one he had asked for last year was not staying inflated for as long as it used to.

Roy asked for the same things he asked for every year - a new pair of shades, new earphones, a new workout machine, and a container of "manly" cologne. Everybody knew that Roy went on the perfume swapping website to exchange it for something that was far from manly or even unisex, but nobody was stupid enough to admit it to Roy's face.

Iggy's list featured a lot of very hi-technical stuff that baffled both Bowser and Kamek, so in order to get everything right they had to consult the guru of all things schweet and hi-technical himself, Francis the chameleon. Iggy wanted a microcontroller kit, a pair of mannequin legs with movable joints - "Don't ask" Francis said - a boxed set of first-edition pristine condition Dirk Drain-Head comics, issues 1 through 144 - "But LEMMY has a subscription!" Bowser protested, but Francis explained to him why the older ones were especially desirable - a boxed set of every episode of that anime series about magical girls that transform into pukey-sweet rainbow-farting ponies, along with every issue of the manga - "Thank Hell he hasn't asked for the dolls!" Bowser grumbled, until he saw that one of Francis's cutesy MeowMaid bots was on the list - Fighting Kings, the hot new PC game that all the nerds were becoming addicted to, and the one gift item that stumped Francis, a sack of chocolate milk.

"A sack of... what? That... that must be some hi-technical jargon for... something... but I've never heard of it... that's... that's IMPOSSIBLE!" Francis was having a conniption over not knowing for once what he thought was a term for something hi-technical, but Bowser just figured it was literally a sack of chocolate milk and resolved to figure out how to get a giant sackful of it. Francis initially denied Bowser's request for a MeowMaid bot, but the dragon-Koopa King frightened him too much to say no twice.

Wendy's list was the one he most dreaded, but unlike most years, she did not ask for anything too outlandishly ridiculous such as a water park or a celebrity boyfriend. Her list was a laundry list - no pun intended - of Victoria's Shell bras and panties, with very specific details about what ones she wanted; to be precise, the ones she saw the models and pop stars wearing on the fashion show; and the usual shoes, makeup, jewelry, perfume and body lotion gift sets, bath beads, and a new phone, even though her mother sent her one as an extremely late birthday present only last month.

Morton, as usual, wanted old-school rock and roll CDs and guitar equipment, but this year something truly different turned up on his wish list - a vibrating chair. Not a bad idea, Bowser realized once he had thought about it; he all of a sudden decided that he could use a vibrating chair himself. He remembered sitting in one and trying it out at that one store in the mall but he had never considered actually buying one. He groaned, however, realizing that if Morton got one then Wendy would probably scream and decide that she wanted one too.

Bowser had worked hard for the past month and gotten just about everything his kids wanted, and was patting himself on the back for it when he realized that one of his kids had not written a wish list.

"GWWWAAAAAHHHH WE FORGOT LARRY!"