After some trial and error, I hit on the notion of “everyone gives their gift to the next person down alphabetically” as a nice way for us to include everyone without wasting a lot of verbiage on who was whose Santa. But Rachel’s refusal to play by the rules keeps it from being too mechanical.

So that’s E-Merl’s gift to Frigg in panel 4 there. Nice try, bro, but the discount rack just doesn’t have maces as durable as the one she relies on. We’ll see her working out with it on the next page, though, which is as close to gracious appreciation as one could expect from her. More subtly, Gravedust sits on a leaf-stuffed pillow in the last frame, a gift from Fr’Nj. (Frigg’s “gift” to Fr’Nj will come up later.)

We needed a few weeks’ gap here in part because the last chapter was set in autumn, and while Axemas may not fall EXACTLY on the solstice, it seemed like the general idea of “winter holidays” was an important parallel.