The screen flickers with a holiday glow, but the warmth quickly gives way to a chill that snakes through Salem’s streets. It’s that time of year again when decorations glitter and rumors coil around the town like tinsel on a windy night. Welcome to Days of Our Lives, where the holiday spirit collides with the kind of mischief that only the most dangerous children can conjure. Our Salem, ever a magnet for drama, now faces a countdown to Christmas that promises more shocks than carolers and more peril than a snowstorm with sharp edges.

First, the channel’s countdown to chaos begins with three contenders who have earned their place on Santa’s most infamous list. These are not mere childish capers; these are calculated moves that reveal a temperament skinned with malice, a risk to everyone who crosses their path. The trio sits at the edge of the stage, each name a spark waiting to ignite into a blaze that could scorch the Dearra dynasty and send tremors through every corridor of Salem’s power.

Sophia Choi takes the opening bow with a glare that could frost a windowpane. Here’s the girl who seems to carry a hurricane inside her. The allegations against her aren’t small disappointments or rash, silly lies; they’re carefully orchestrated maneuvers aimed at reshaping the lives around her. They accuse her of fabricating—and then weaponizing—the possibility that Tate Black is the father of her unborn child. The host doesn’t mince words: what looks like an “unintentional” lie is, to many, a deliberate, strategic play. In Salem, where paternity plots are almost a sport, Sophia has escalated beyond mere teenage drama. She wields deception with precision, turning a would-be romance into a weapon, and a child’s fate into leverage to cling to someone who isn’t truly hers either in heart or intention.

Her misdeeds spread like a fever from one domed hallway to another. She’s accused of trying to disrupt Johnny and Chanel’s fragile bid to build a family, a blow that lands with ruinous force on kids who have already weathered more trials than most adults could bear. Then there’s the ongoing campaign against Holly Jonas, a campaign that reads more like a declaration of envy and a thirst for power than simple teenage heartbreak. And the pinnacle of her cruelty? Using Rachel Black—a child already navigating a storm of trauma—as a pawn in her high-stakes schoolyard games. Sophia’s cruelty isn’t just mischief; it’s a blueprint for villainy, and the host is blunt: this is a new level of toxicity, a future villain in the making who deserves nothing but coal.

Second on the list arrive Thomas Deare and his quiet, calculating storm. The host’s eyes narrow as they describe a boy who literally blends into the shadows of the Deara mansion, a child who has endured more than his fair share of pain. The warning bells ring loud: the quiet ones can be the deadliest. Thomas isn’t the boy who screams at the world; he’s the one who internalizes pain, letting the trauma of losing his mother and watching his father flare into cycles of volatility stew inside him until they simmer into something dangerous. The theory suggests that 2025 might be the year Thomas flips from wounded observer to strategic player, a mastermind behind subtle, unseen machinations.

Thomas’s mind, the host argues, could be a fuse waiting for the right spark. He’s the synthesis of two forces—EJ’s sharp, calculating intensity and Chad’s brooding intellect. If a fire starts in the heart of the Deara mansion, some suspect that Thomas’s careful, quiet plotting will be the match. The diary that sits locked away—its pages filled with the history of a house built on secrets—could reveal more than homework assignments; it could become a manifesto, a blueprint for vengeance that Thomas might unleash when the moment is right. Santa might know what hides in that diary, the host whispers: not just a list of chores, but a plan, a dark map to be traced in the ink of rage and grief.

And then the crown jewel on Santa’s hot-list: Rachel Black, described as the ultimate epitome of chaotic child energy. She is painted as a prodigy of turmoil, a force whose trauma, complexity, and wounds are used to justify behavior that, in the host’s opinion, crosses the line into dangerous territory. The host’s stance is unflinching: trauma is not an excuse that absolves violence or manipulation. It explains pain; it does not sanitize the capacity for harm.