Welcome to the eighteenth 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 #7 in the countdown, "Merry Christmas, X-Men" by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum and Sam Grainger from X-Men #98.

As I mentioned in the last installment in the countdown, the famous Gladiator/Cannonball fight in Uncanny X-Men #341 was a pretty clear homage to this, the very first X-Men Christmas story. However, despite being actually CALLED "Merry Christmas, X-Men," this issue really doesn't spend all that much time on the whole, you know, CHIRSTMAS aspect of the story.

That said, the Christmas stuff that we DID get was, well, very, very cool/important.

First up, Cockrum worked in all sorts of little Easter Eggs into the opening page (check out Doctor Doom ice skating in the background), like Nick Fury out with Contessa and Dave Cockrum out with his then-girlfriend (and future wife), Paty. This was also the first time that we saw Wolverine without his mask!

We also learned Wolverine's opinion on Christmas in this issue. The second page has cameos from Julius Schwartz, Clark Kent and Lois Lane...

In the next page, we see Cyclops and Jean Grey share their first kiss ever, with Jack Kirby and Stan Lee making cameos and making comments about the X-Men. And then, of course, the Sentinels showed up...

So that's it for the Christmas part of the story. Honestly, though, since those three pages are pretty big AND the issue is so important (it is also the issue that introduced Wolverine's claws being part of his body, Wolverine saying "bub" and Wolverine calling Jean Grey "Red" for the first time...

So yeah, the story obviously leads into Jean Grey becoming the Phoenix, so this is a major storyline and I couldn't help but include it high on the list, despite being, you know, just three pages of actual Christmas content.