The dark figure creeps over the rooftop, surefooted in his dark boots, despite the slippery snow. Carefully shifting his blood-red coat aside, he climbs over the chimney lip and dropped, whispering an incantation to slow his fall. Swiftly, he places several objects beneath the gaudily bedecked carcass of a young tree. One object was a lens designed to alter one’s perception so that one saw only what the lens revealed, rather than what their eyes told them. Another was a personal favorite, a box in which a perpetually smiling clown waited, leaping forth when an unsuspecting victim should make the mistake of activating it.

After searching for several minutes, the intruder samples several pastries from the kitchen, drinking the lukewarm beverage he finds on the family table. Before leaving, he stuffs bits of pastry, lumps of sugar, and fruit inside one sock belonging to each resident. He then encants the needed spell. Clinging carefully to the walls of the chimney, he climbs up and out of the house, silently pussyfooting on to the next house.