Welcome back to Blogmas 2025, my annual series of holiday-themed blog posts that runs every day through Christmas Day. This year, I’ve enlisted the help of AI to generate writing prompts for each post, which has led to some interesting creative challenges and unexpected directions. Today’s prompt for December 23rd asks me to craft a fiction piece: “The snow globe on your shelf suddenly shows a scene from your own future Christmas. What do you see?” So pour yourself some hot cocoa, settle in by the fire (or your preferred heating source), and let’s explore what mysteries might swirl within the glass…
Marcus had owned the snow globe for exactly three days before he noticed it was wrong.
He’d bought it at the estate sale on Maple Street, drawn by the absurdly low price and the way the afternoon light caught the glass. The old woman running the sale had seemed eager to be rid of it, practically pushing it into his hands for five dollars. “It’s been in the family for generations,” she’d said, then added cryptically, “but some inheritances are meant to move on.”
The globe was heavier than it looked, its bronze base tarnished with age but still showing intricate engravings of holly and ivy. Inside, a perfect miniature Victorian street scene waited under perpetual snowfall—gas lamps, a small church, carolers frozen mid-song. Classic Christmas kitsch. Marcus had placed it on the bookshelf in his apartment, between his father’s old copy of A Christmas Carol and a ceramic reindeer his daughter Emma had made in third grade, back when she still spent Christmases with him.
But on that third night, December 23rd, something shifted.
Marcus noticed it first as a flicker in his peripheral vision while he was grading papers. The snow inside the globe was falling differently—not the usual lazy drift when disturbed, but with purpose, as if driven by an actual winter wind. When he picked it up for closer inspection, the scene inside had completely changed.
Gone was the Victorian street. In its place, he saw a living room he didn’t recognize, though something about it felt achingly familiar. A massive Christmas tree dominated one corner, its lights creating a warm amber glow. The furniture was different from anything he owned—modern but comfortable, the kind of pieces people actually lived with rather than just displayed. And there were people. Moving people, impossibly small but undeniably alive within the glass sphere.
Marcus nearly dropped the globe.
He steadied himself, hands trembling slightly, and looked closer. An elderly man sat in a recliner near the tree, his white hair thin but neatly combed. The man was laughing at something, his whole body shaking with genuine mirth. There was something about the shape of his shoulders, the way he gestured with his hands when he talked…
The recognition hit Marcus like a physical blow. He was looking at himself. Himself, but decades older—maybe in his eighties, lined and weathered but unmistakably him.
The globe grew warm in his hands as the scene continued to play out. A woman entered the miniature room, carrying a tray of cookies. She was perhaps a few years younger than the future-Marcus, her gray hair pulled back in a loose bun, wearing a red sweater decorated with tiny reindeer. She set the tray down and future-Marcus caught her hand, pulling her into a brief dance to music Marcus couldn’t hear. She laughed, swatting at him playfully before settling onto the arm of his chair.
Marcus didn’t recognize her. She wasn’t Sarah, his ex-wife. She wasn’t anyone from his current life—which, granted, wasn’t saying much. At forty-three, Marcus had made peace with his solitude. The divorce had been finalized eight years ago, Emma was twenty-one now and spending Christmas with her mother’s new family in Colorado, and his dating life consisted mainly of polite deflections when well-meaning colleagues tried to set him up.
But in the globe, future-Marcus looked… complete. That was the only word for it.
The door in the miniature room burst open, and Marcus watched a flood of people enter. Children—so many children—racing toward the tree with the chaotic energy of Christmas morning. Teenagers followed, trying to look cool but unable to hide their excitement. Adults carried presents and dishes of food, calling out greetings Marcus couldn’t hear.
A young woman with auburn hair knelt beside future-Marcus’s chair, and he saw the old man’s face transform with such pure joy that Marcus felt his chest tighten. The woman was showing him something—a baby, Marcus realized, wrapped in a green blanket. Future-Marcus held the infant with practiced gentleness, his weathered face soft with wonder.
The auburn-haired woman looked familiar. Something about her smile, the way she tucked her hair behind her ear… With a start, Marcus recognized Emma. Not Emma as she was now, young and uncertain and still finding her way, but Emma grown into motherhood, comfortable in her skin, radiating the kind of happiness Marcus hadn’t seen in her since the divorce.
She was there. She had come back.
The scene in the globe continued like a silent film of impossible beauty. Future-Marcus was surrounded—not just by Emma, but by what had to be a dozen other people. Some looked like they might be his children or grandchildren, sharing his dark eyes or the distinctive shape of his nose. Others were clearly chosen family, brought in by marriage or friendship but no less beloved for it.
The woman in the red sweater reappeared with a guitar, of all things, and the entire group arranged themselves around future-Marcus’s chair. They were singing—Christmas carols, Marcus assumed, though he could hear nothing through the glass. Future-Marcus was singing too, his mouth forming words Marcus couldn’t read, one hand keeping time on the arm of his chair while the other held that tiny baby against his chest.
Marcus set the globe down carefully and walked to his window. Outside, December rain pelted the empty street. His apartment was silent except for the radiator’s occasional clang. The only decoration he’d put up this year was the snow globe itself, and that had been more accident than intention.
When he returned to the shelf, the globe had changed again. The scene was the same—that warm, crowded living room—but it was later now. The chaos had settled into something quieter. Children were scattered around the room, some playing with new toys, others curled up sleeping against their parents. Future-Marcus was still in his chair, but the woman in the red sweater had joined him properly now, the two of them sharing the recliner in defiance of its single-person design. They were looking at something together—a photo album, Marcus thought, or maybe a tablet. Every few moments, one would point at something and they’d both laugh, leaning into each other with the easy intimacy of people who had chosen each other again and again for decades.
Emma was there too, asleep on the couch with her baby (future-Marcus’s grandchild, he realized with a vertigo-inducing shift in perspective). Someone had covered her with a quilt. Her husband—Marcus assumed it was her husband—sat near her feet, reading to two older children who were fighting sleep.
It was all so impossibly domestic. So absolutely different from the trajectory Marcus had assumed his life was taking. He’d made his peace with growing old alone—or thought he had. He’d accepted that Emma might never fully forgive him for the divorce, for choosing career over presence during her teenage years. He’d convinced himself that solo Christmases with Chinese takeout and Netflix were perfectly adequate, even preferable to the messy complications of family gatherings.
But the globe showed a different story. A story where somehow, between forty-three and eighty-something, Marcus had built this. Or found it. Or had it find him.
The woman in the red sweater turned in the miniature scene, and for just a moment, she seemed to look directly out at Marcus. Her face was kind, marked by laugh lines and years of smiling. She looked like someone who had chosen joy repeatedly, deliberately, despite whatever life had thrown at her. She looked like someone Marcus would want to know.
The globe flickered, and the scene began to fade. The warm living room grew dimmer, the figures became less distinct. Marcus grabbed the globe, shaking it gently, trying to bring the vision back, but all he got was snow. Regular snow, falling on the original Victorian street scene, the carolers once again frozen mid-song.
He stayed up most of the night, watching the globe, waiting for another vision. Nothing came. When exhaustion finally drove him to bed near dawn, he dreamed of Christmas carols he couldn’t quite hear and a woman whose name he didn’t yet know.
The next morning—Christmas Eve—Marcus did something he hadn’t done in three years. He called Emma.
“Dad?” She sounded surprised but not upset. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” he said, surprising himself by meaning it. “I was just wondering… I know you have plans with your mom, but would you maybe want to get coffee? After the holidays? When you’re back from Colorado?”
The pause felt eternal. Then: “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.”
It wasn’t much. It wasn’t a house full of grandchildren or a woman in a red sweater or carols by the tree. But it was a start. A single step toward a future that might, just might, look something like what the globe had shown him.
Marcus returned to the bookshelf and picked up the snow globe one more time. The Victorian scene remained unchanged, but he could swear the snow was falling differently now—not aimless but intentional, each flake finding exactly where it needed to be.
He thought about the old woman at the estate sale, how she’d said some inheritances were meant to move on. Maybe she hadn’t been talking about the globe itself. Maybe she’d been talking about the future it contained, the possibility of choosing connection over isolation, of building something worth passing on.
Marcus smiled and set the globe back on its shelf. He had work to do. A future to build. And apparently, if the globe was to be believed, about four decades to get it right.
Outside his window, the December rain had turned to snow—the first white Christmas the city had seen in years. Marcus chose to take it as a sign.
What would you see in your own magical snow globe? Would it show you a future you’re already building toward, or would it reveal something completely unexpected—a path you haven’t yet imagined taking? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. And remember, sometimes the best gifts are the ones that show us not what is, but what still could be.
Feature Photo by Julia Filirovska
The Confusing Middle 