Welcome to the ninth 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 #16 in the countdown, "Yes, Jubilee, There is a Santa Claus" by Joe Harris, Adam Pollina and Mark Morales (plus a bunch of other inkers) from Generation X Holiday Special #1.

It really is amazing that Generation X lasted roughly seven years and yet somehow managed to have FOUR Christmas stories in those seven years. A lot of X-titles have never even had a single Christmas story. X-Force, for instance, avoided having a Christmas story during its entire run. New Mutants only had a Christmas dance in one issue that clearly was not a Christmas issue at all (it was about the members of the New Mutants dealing with being killed and resurrected by the Beyonder during Secret Wars II).

The Generation X Holiday Special served as a sequel to the first Generation X Christmas issue (which was the first story on this year's Christmas countdown). In that story, the team fought against the Orphan-Maker, the child operative of the villainous Nanny, who uses the Orphan-Maker to kill the parents of mutant children so that Nanny can raise them herself.

Orphan-Maker comes for a mutant child, but accidentally takes one of the mutant kid's human bullies instead. Generation X fights the Orphan-Maker while Jubilee goes after the young mutant and is shocked to discover that the mutant kid has somehow used his powers to take Santa Claus hostage!!

The Orphan-Maker shows up, but, of course, being a kid, he has a funny reaction to meeting the actual Santa Claus...

In the end, after Orphan-Maker leaves, we see that Santa Claus is actually a mutant!!

This is not the first time that it has been hinted that Santa Claus was a mutant, but they REALLY leaned into it with this story. It ends with Jubilee getting a doll from Santa and her having a happy celebration of the holiday with her friends. Jubilee's orphan status doesn't come up a LOT, but this story used it well.