Welcome to the fourteenth installment of A Very Merry X-Mas, where I count down my 24 favorite X-Men (or X-Men related) Christmas stories!

Today, we look at #11 in the countdown, "Ceremonies" by Chris Claremont, Tom Derenick, Rick Ketcham and Norm Rapmund from X-Men #109.

Amazingly enough, just like the last story on the countdown, this is ANOTHER example of Chris Claremont using a Christmas issue to wrap up plots ahead of a new creative team on a series.

This one, though, also served as a conclusion to Claremont's aborted return as the main X-Men writer (he started with X-Men #100, so his return didn't even last a full year), but unlike the other story, which mostly just cleared things out to make room for a new writer (Peter Milligan) on X-Men, this time, there is a bit more heft to the proceedings because Claremont is specifically setting up his own future run on X-Treme X-Men, which was all about the X-Men traveling the globe in search of Destiny's missing diaries that foretold the future of the world.

So, at the X-Men's Christmas party, the heroes squired away to determine who would be on the special team that would go to "x-treme" lengths to find Destiny's diaries...

There are also a number of other nice character bits for Christmastime, with some characters reconnecting with old loves while one couple (Archangel and Psylocke) officially break up. In general, though, it served as a nice set-up for X-Treme X-Men.