The year is coming to a close and families are gathering for all the end-of-year-festivities. In other words, it's the holidays once again! In celebration, I thought it would be fun to do a small look back at some of Magic's most fun and beloved cards: the Happy Holidays cards! I'm going to provide a little background on these cards as well as talk about some of my personal favorites.

If you're unaware of what these are, they're special promo cards given out internally and to various business partners once a year. Each is a funny card, using either silver borders or black borders with the new acorn symbol to allow each card to do fun, quirky, and, most importantly, festive things. They're a favorite of casual settings, Cubes, and more, and often prove to be treasured showpieces in collections.

This year's card is Eggnogger's 'Stach. If you don't pick up on the reference, it's a fun play on Bootleggers' Stash, a popular Commander card from Streets of New Capenna. This encourages players to get a fun and festive drink and gives a bonus to your creatures if you indulge in the fun. It also features Magic's new mascot of sorts in Loot and marks 19 years of holiday nonsense as well!

The first of these promos was Fruitcake Elemental back in 2006. I've always adored this card, as I loved the comedic theme behind the design, as I came to know fruitcakes in the United States for being tough thanks to cartoons I'd grown up with. This made Fruitcake Elemental all the more amusing, as it's impossible to deal with and can hurt you as well. You also give fruitcakes to others, so it fits the theming quite well.

Each of these continued to do additional fun things as the years went on. Gifts Given provides a fun take on the classic Gifts Ungiven, Evil Presents gives your opponent a deadly gift, and Snow Mercy plays up its design as a snow globe by tapping and untapping itself. These early years also brought perhaps the one miss among the holiday cards with Season's Beatings, a card that may have proven a little too dark and real in hindsight despite the humor behind it.

While I was aware of these cards throughout the late 2000s, this was a period where I was in and out of the game, and thus didn't pay much attention to the holiday cards. However, in 2012, I was back full force, and I quickly fell in love with Naughty // Nice. Not only was the card art a delight thanks to the character from then-current printings of Diabolic Tutor making a return, but also the card was just mechanically fun. Because of this, it makes for an awesome rule zero Commander card or even just a cool Cube card.

The same could be said of the card from the very next year: Stocking Tiger. This too has also proven to be tremendously popular in Cubes because you can treat the sealed booster as a new Cube pack in most situations. This angle of play is the same reason Booster Tutor and Unleash the Pack have also become quite popular in all kinds of Cubes over the years.

Following this, though, we fell into a period where some of these holiday cards would be more appealing than others. For example, cards like Goblin Sleigh Ride and Some Disassembly Required feel somewhat forgettable compared to many of the others shown thus far. On the other hand, Thopter Pie Network became a fan favorite, owing to the already fan favorite Thopter Spy Network it was based on. Bog Humbugs proved similarly fun, as it played into both the popular "bah, humbug" phrase of A Christmas Carol's Scrooge as well as the idea of singing holiday songs.

Of the more recent couple of years, Last-Minute Chopping and Chaos Wrap both proved quite popular among players. The former provided a fun thematic outlet for fan favorites Gisa and Geralf while having some humorous play as well. Chaos Wrap on the other hand is a fun play on Commander staple Chaos Warp, offering a similar effect but having the permanent come in as a 4/4 present instead.

Each of these cards - and several more I've failed to mention here - bring a bit of light-hearted fun to the wider Magic community every year. Players everywhere love seeing what the new card is that comes out every year and it's always fun seeing stores and content creators getting theirs in the mail. If you're ever able to do so reasonably, try picking one up and finding fun ways to use it with your local playgroup.

Happy holidays, and may all your booster packs provide plenty of amazing gifts in them!

Paige Smith

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