“It’s the darkest just before dawn.” Agent Leeam Walker walks in darkness. He is imprisoned in his surroundings, held captive by circumstances. Questions haunt him, but he has no answers. Uncertainty shrouds his path. Is there yet any hope before him? Criminal Hugo Maldonaldo is sinking. His safeguards are gone, and he is falling deeper and deeper into filth. Sin and evil piles up on his hands. He is broken, despairing, and alone. There is no hope, no future, for him. Officer Matthew Randall awaits a dream. For over thirty years he has waited, yet every day comes the reminder that this desire is unfulfilled. He has failed; he has not yet been enough to earn this privilege. Now he begins to lose hope he ever will. Christmas Eve is a radically different day for each of these three men. Leeam struggles to care for his dependant little brother while battling the corporation of criminals overtaking his land. Hugo strives to forget memories and conscience while trying to hold out against the evilness around him. Matt goes to bring joy to abandoned children while longing desperately for a baby to call his own. As the hours pass, each battles guilt, loss, and hopelessness. Will any of them find some light in the darkness this night?

“Maybe,” he whispered, “red can be a beautiful colour, after all.” Twelve-year-old Jay hates and fears the colour red. To him, it represents the murders of his parents and the menacing danger that surrounds him in the cutthroat criminal-controlled section of Kalsyia’s biggest city. He also intensely fears the police, having witnessed an incident of brutality. Life for him is one eternal round of fear and anxiety. When a traumatic event occurs involving his adored older brother and a red pickup truck, Jay finds an additional reason to hate the colour red. And when he is attacked, accidentally runs into a group of policemen, and is caught, Jay is certain that death is imminent. But to his astonishment, he is instead freed and placed in a foster family. Officer Randall was one of the officers who caught him, but he is kind and understanding, and his wife is very sweet. But Jay still fears them and is hesitant to allow them into his heart. And he is particularly afraid of the Randalls’ adopted son, Orlando, who vividly reminds Jay of his worst abuser. But as time stretches on, and Jay gets to know the Randalls and Orlando better, he begins to wonder… perhaps not everyone and everything is the same. Can he learn to love and trust these people, in spite of what similar persons did? Can the colour red come to mean more than death and danger?

“It was almost Christmas. And he loved Christmas.” The Randall family loves Christmas. But it’s hard to enjoy Christmas when your loved ones are missing. It’s particularly hard when you thought you’d have those loved ones for Christmas… but instead you find they’ll be gone for even longer. Texting just doesn’t cut it. Especially when the person you text can generally only reply when you’re asleep. It’s also hard to enjoy Christmas when you miss the safe, happy Christmases of before. And it’s hard when you know that the Christmas you want to offer your new family member is impossible, and that he doesn’t deserve the little Christmas you can afford him. And when the little bit of normal Christmas you can give him reduces him to frightened tears, Christmas seems particularly horrid. But can Christmas be a merry Christmas even if it’s not the Christmas you’re used to? After all… what really makes Christmas?

“Blue would become again the colour of happiness and calm. It would be the colour of peace.” It has been ten months since Jay came to live with the Randalls. The frightening colour red has disappeared from his life, and the peaceful colour blue is everywhere he looks. Then his birthday party is crashed by the unexpected return of his unknown foster brother, Geraldo. And as Jay struggles to grow accustomed to him and the changes his return brings, The Brothers strike massively at Kalsyia, defying the authority of the government. As the situation gets worse and everyone becomes more and more distraught, Jay finds himself challenged harder than he ever expected to be. When he is beaten to his knees and brought face to face with his limitations, he begins to wonder… what is his trust in? Where is God when things are hard? Can he ever find true peace in the midst of all this chaos and terror?

“Christmas wasn’t Christmas if it didn’t feel like Christmas.” Officer Matt Randall is the best of the best. He’s a good, strong man, beloved by his family and his community. He’s always been enough, and he is confident in his ability to keep that position. But Kalsyia is still very chaotic from the uprising last summer. When his son faces a deadly situation, Matt’s confidence is a little shaken. And when he finds his wife breaking down with stress and frustration over the country’s turmoil, Matt realizes that he really isn’t enough after all. He’s not strong enough to protect his loved ones from everything, nor wise enough to know how to care for them. He doesn’t even know if he’s good enough to win his paradise. While Matt struggles with his doubt, discouragement, and depression, he finds that he isn’t even strong enough to hide his pain from his loved ones. It certainly won’t be a very happy Christmas for them if he can’t get himself back together. As his family begins to grow tense, Matt searches desperately for hope. Will he ever be enough, some day? Or will his loved ones fall apart because of his brokenness? Can Christmas still be Christmas, even if everything is broken and un-Christmasy?

It’s her first Christmas away from home, thanks to the snowstorms. Isabella’s been through a lot this year. She’s lost her father. She’s chosen an unconventional career path that she is pressured to change. She’s struggling with her first year of college. Overwhelm, guilt, and worry are her constant friends. When her grandparents invite her to their nearby farm for the Christmas holidays, Isabella finds trouble still dogging her path—or rather, clogging her tires. But will an unexpected rescue turn her eyes back from the darkness she wallows in to the Light she’s been given? As the day progresses and emotions sway, can Isabella find the peace she longs for as she realizes the true meaning of Christ’s birth? The first 5,000 words of this novella were published in the “Seize the Night” anthology by Abigail Kay Harris et. al.