It wasn’t just any festival, but one carried on over the years as a truly magical event. The festival, which started in 1912, was the first one of its kind to feature a marriage in the town center. Ever since then, one lucky couple got married there each year, never divorcing, always a perfect match. Not until 1940, did the festival change. Couples were handpicked and put together, married in the town square, and accepted their fate. And every year, the newspaper covered the previous marriages, never finding unhappiness, but only true love matches. And so the magic of Christmas lived on. Words like “fate,” “destiny,” and “magic,” were often thrown around, but Mary Ann Simms no longer believed in any of those things. She used to—hell, she even swooned a time or two— years ago. She no longer believed in fate and love—not just for herself, but for those around her as well. She wondered if the ballots were rigged, faked, planned.
