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There were plenty of things Lloyd Garmadon had missed when he was little before his uncle Wu and the ninja took him in. Growing up at Darkley's they hadn't cared much about him or any of the other kids there. That meant the kids were basically on their own, and because of the nature of school you could never know who to trust so friends weren't really an option. Sure you had people you hung out with but you had to be sure never to let your guard down. Lloyd learned that the hard way.
When Wu first took him in the ninja hadn't liked him very much and he definitely hadn't given them any reasons to, but as time went on that started to change. At first he was skeptical. How could he know if they really cared or just wanted to manipulate him? After a while it seemed like they really did care. And for the first time in his life Lloyd Garmadon really felt like he'd found a home. Like he had a family.
The other thing this new family gave him was the chance to finally have a (semi) normal childhood. Suddenly people cared what happened to him. That meant big things like celebrating his birthday (he'd never done that before. He hadn't known that people even did that), but it also meant the small things. Like Jay taking him to see the latest Starfarer movie or baking with Zane. They always had something new to show him.
Every time they mentioned something he'd never done and he asked about it they would give him a shocked look, and immediately declare he needed to do it. That was the look they gave him now. Jay had said something about it almost being time to celebrate Christmas and he'd never heard of it before to he'd blurted out "Christmas? What's Christmas?" and they'd all immediately turned towards him looking shocked.
"How have you never heard of Christmas?" Jay yelled out, sounding completely outraged.
"I'm sure he's at least heard of it even if you've never celebrated," Kai insisted.
"They probably didn't celebrate at Darkley's," Nya pointed out.
He shook his head and looked around at them waiting for the explanation of what Christmas was, but instead of one them ending up explaining they all started talking at once.
"It's so fun! There's so much we have to do!"
"We need to get a tree! And decorate the bounty!"
"We have to make Christmas cookies! We can all decorate them!"
"We should do a secret Santa for gifts!"
Their excited yells definitely didn't explain anything. Partially since they were all talking over each other, but also because they just kept adding more things instead of explaining the first one. For some reason they needed to go get a tree which seemed to be part of decorating which involved a lot of lights. Zane and Cole seemed super excited about making cookies, Kai kept bringing up presents, Nya said something about movies, and Jay was going off and sweaters. Christmas sounded complicated.
They all continued their rambling leaving him to try to get what he could from the conversation, still not fully sure what any of it meant.
*****
He didn't get any more idea on what Christmas was for a few more days, until Cole said they needed to go get a tree. Zane had said he located a good forest they could go to so they could cut down a good one so now he found himself walking through a snowy forest looking at trees. It was freezing and Lloyd didn't understand why they needed to do this. Instead of sitting on the warm bounty, they had to go get a pine tree. One he still didn't understand why they needed.
"How long will this take," he whined, stopping in his tracks. They'd only been there for like 10 minutes, but he already wanted to go back. If Christmas was about freezing out in the woods to find a tree he wanted nothing to do with it. "I'm freezing and this isn't nearly as fun as you made it sound."
"Then maybe we should make it more fun," Kai suggested, a mischievous smirk spreading across his face.
He bent down to the ground, scooping up some snow, which he quickly began to form into a ball. Immediately the others began backing away, as though Kai had pulled some kind of weapon on them. They didn't move fast enough though, because Kai threw the snowball and it found it's mark. Right in the back of Jay's head.
Lloyd could remember boys from Darkley's throwing snow at each other and that never ended well. They would shove it down another kids shirt or gang up on someone to attack them with it. It always ended in fighting, normally someone got hurt. When you threw snow at someone they would angry. Why would Kai do that? How could he possibly think this would make it more fun?
But then Jay laughed. He reached down and grabbed some snow, which he threw back at Kai, loudly declaring: "Snowball fight!"
Kai dodged the attack, and the snowball hit Zane who clearly figured the snowball wouldn't hit him, because he didn't even try to move. Just like Jay and Kai he didn't seem upset about the fighting either. Neither did Cole or Nya. In fact they all jumped in, smiling and laughing.
He just watched at first, not sure if he should join in. At Darkley's you never wanted to get in the middle of any kind of snow throwing. Some kids ended up seriously hurt, mostly because the often threw ice too. This didn't seem like that though. This snowball fight seemed fun.
Suddenly a bunch of snow hit him in the side and he whipped around toward it to find Kai standing their grinning. "Come one Lloyd! Don't just stand there. It's fun."
A glob of snow, thrown by Nya, hit Kai in the face. "Yeah it sure is!" she said, smirking. "You should definitely try throwing snow at Kai."
He grabbed some snow from the ground shaping it into a ball which he threw at Kai, who failed to dodge it. And just like that he'd entered the battle. Kai threw one back and soon he found himself throwing them at the others too. This was fun. Definitely better then any snowball fights he'd seen before.
The fight continued until Jay tripped and fell backwards into a tree, which quickly brought the fight to a halt. They all ran over to him just he just looked up at the pine tree he'd fallen into.
"Guys! I think I just found the perfect tree!"
*****
When they made it back with the tree, Zane made them all hot chocolate to warm them up and soon they were working together to wrap the tree in lights and hang little ornaments from it's branches. They had other lights too that they hung around other parts of the bounty to make the whole place look festive.
When they finished with the lights Jay mentioned that his mom had shown him how make paper snow flakes as a child and insisted they should make some. Lloyd really tried, but they always seemed to come out crooked, the worst ones not even looking like snowflakes. The others didn't seem to mind though. They hung them up with all the rest and told him he'd done a good job. He'd never heard that before he lived here on the bounty.
By the time they finished the sun had set and the lights on the deck looked amazing. They shined in bright colors that looked beautiful in the dark. He could've stayed up looking at them all night if Wu hadn't forced him to go to bed. At least Zane promised they would make cookies in the morning.
*****
The next morning, just like Zane promised, they made cookies. The nindroid was easily the best cookie so he took the lead showing the others what to do to make the dough and get it properly rolled out. Even with Zane's guidance and attempts to keep any incidents from happening Kai managed to knock over a bunch of on Cole, and with his black clothes it really stood out. At least they managed to get the dough right.
"We did not have a lot of cookie cutters so not all of them Christmas ones," Zane informed them, gesturing at the cookie cutters he'd placed on the counter.
"Is that an alligator?" Kai asked, picking one up to look at it. The cutter in question was in fact an alligator. "That's awesome! I'm totally gonna make some Christmas alligators!"
They all set to work cutting out cookies, singing along to some Christmas music Jay put on. Lloyd didn't know any of the words, but it was still fun. Many of them were easy to pick up anyway.
While they waited from them to bake and cool they spent more time singing and hanging out. Kai loudly sang a dumb version of the lyrics to a song called 'Jingle Bells' over the real one which made Nya roll her eyes. Jay dramatically sang along to a song he knew all the words to that Lloyd was pretty sure Jay called 'All I Want For Christmas Is You'. Cole got annoyed when a cover of the song 'Last Christmas' came on, insisting they skip it because only the version by Wham! was any good and no one else should sing it.
When they started to set up for decorating Kai mentioned something about presents again and this time he decided to actually ask instead of just figuring things out. Christmas was tomorrow to knowing know would definitely be better. "What presents?" he asked.
"On Christmas morning people get presents for each other," Nya explained. "It's way to show them you care about them and it's fun."
"I didn't get you guys anything," Lloyd said, looking down and the counter. He hadn't even known he needed to. They probably thought he was terrible friend now. They'd all done so many cool things for Christmas and he hadn't gotten them anything.
"It is alright Lloyd," Zane said, cheerfully. "Christmas is not just about presents. Now let's decorate some cookies."
He wondered if he should apologize again, but the others really didn't seem to mind and they all jumped right into cookie decorating. He didn't want to spoil the fun by reminding them of his screw up so he decided to drop. Maybe he could figure something out later.
He picked up a cookie and looked at the frosting choices. Suddenly he had an idea. He didn't get them a gift but he could make them each something special.
*****
Decorating the cookies took a long time and by the time finished it was almost dinner time. Lloyd set the five cookies he made specially for his friends to the side. He'd taken five of the alligator cookies and used their colors to frost them, then done his best to put the four the elemental symbols and the samurai X symbol on them. The symbols looked messy and smudged, definitely far from prefect, but something told him they would still love them. He really hope they would. It hadn't been easy to stop them from seeing what put on the cookies.
"We should watch a Christmas movie!" Jay suggested, as they finished with cleanup. Lloyd hadn't even known they made Christmas movies, but they had Christmas songs so it made sense. People really did take Christmas seriously.
"Yeah! Let's watch Die Hard!" Kai yelled.
"Lloyd is ten! We are not watching Die Hard," Nya replied, rolling her eyes at her brother who sighed looking disappointed. Lloyd really didn't see why a Christmas movie would have the name die hard or why he shouldn't watch it, but before he could say anything Cole through out a suggestion.
"What about Home Alone?"
No one had any objections to that choice so soon they were all in gathered in front of the TV, squished together on the couch or on the floor in front of it ready to watch the movie. As it started he glanced around at his friends. Christmas didn't seem complicated or confusing anymore, and Zane had been right when he said it wasn't about presents. This was what Christmas was about. Just being together and having fun. Christmas meant family and now he had one.