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Most of us adore the holidays and attending or hosting the parties that come along with them, but face it: there’s always a bit of anxiety over the guest list. Will your crush show up and stand underneath the mistletoe with you, or will you be stuck chatting with an obnoxious coworker at the punch bowl? Maybe it’s just better to sit the whole thing out…

In that spirit, we’ve found five fictional characters who won’t attend your holiday soiree…for better or for worse.

Pop culture is full of slow-burn, will-they-or-won't-they couples. Luke and Lorelai. Ross and Rachel. Mary and Matthew. Ron and Hermione. Couples whose gradual, winding paths to each other inevitably twist their fandom's stomachs into bittersweet knots while the characters themselves burn with unresolved tension. These are the ships that may take years to sail, but when they do, it's a glorious sight to behold.

There's perhaps no better example of this in modern pop culture than the sweet, slow romance between paper salesman Jim Halpert and receptionist Pam Beesly on the TV series The Office. Their quiet flirtation eventually bloomed into a solid and lasting relationship that provided much of the heart of the show throughout its nine-season run.

Hot cocoa may not be able to heal the world or fix its problems, but it is delicious enough to be momentarily comforting. (Pro hot chocolate tip: try dark chocolate hot cocoa with a churro for stirring—the sugar from the churro sweetens it just enough and is even more tasty soaked with chocolate.)

We're offering hot cocoa to these fictional characters who deserve a bit (or a ton) of cocoa comfort.

Like most of you, we spent the Thanksgiving weekend reheating leftovers and marathoning episodes of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. After nearly a decade away from Rory Gilmore and her voracious reading habits, we were eager to catch up with the residents of Stars Hollow and the books they’ve been devouring.

**Mild spoilers ahead! Haven’t finished the series? Head over to Luke’s Diner and stream the rest of the show. We hear he’s giving out his wifi password now.**

In Madeleine L’Engle’s classic A Wrinkle in Time, the characters quickly come to realize the advantages of using a tesseract (the titular wrinkle in time) in order to travel instantaneously to other planets. The Newbery Award-winning novel tells the story of the Murry children as they rescue their father from Camazotz, a dark planet of conformity. But as sequels to A Wrinkle in Time demonstrate, tesseracting can take the Murrys anywhere or anytime, from the farthest reaches of the galaxy into the tiniest cells.  Since the Murrys have unlimited frequent flyer miles to tesser to any time and place, we’ve got some recommendations for their next vacations!

This past Friday was the National Day of Listening and as far as unofficial holidays go, this is one we can all get behind. Created to celebrate the rich histories of our friends and families, National Day of Listening encourages participants to swap stories with those we love most. Here at Quirk Books, we don’t want the fun to stop when you run out of words. We’ve gathered monologues from some of our favorite playwrights to keep the party going. Because the only family drama we want is a tiff over who gets to play the ingénue.