He had grown up in a household with two religions--his father was a non-practicing Catholic and his mother was Jewish--so it wasn't like he didn't know what Christmas was. Some religious prophet or a part of? god himself was born and then the people who followed him as a god co-opted a pagan holiday. Said pagan holiday ended up becoming the dominant secular holiday of good will and charity when that religion became the dominant religion.
That didn't mean he participated in the gifting rituals, really, beyond just a couple things here and there and with his father's family sometimes. And it was fun to give his closest friends things. He never saw the point of a "Secret Santa."
But it seemed to be something they did here, in the form of Xenia gifting, and Zebulon was not one to purposefully draw attention to himself by not doing what he was expected to do.
So once he was given his assignee, Zebulon hit up one of the local bookstores back in Baltimore. He had no idea what this Tom guy already owned, especially since he didn't know Tom, but he figured he would probably be safe finding him some local mystery and detective novels. He picked a few that looked like they had been picked up and read already--likely meaning they were good--and placed them in some nice wrapping paper with a bow on it.
That should work, right?
Just for good measure, he picked up a little owl bookmark he saw in the store and stuffed it in-between the bow and the paper. That would work.
He brought it back to the Prytaneum with him, quickly moving to search out where Tom would be living. Apollo dorms, right? Did they label their rooms in Apollo? In case they didn't, he asked around when he entered the dorms, trying to figure out which room it was. Easy enough. Once he found it, he set the present down to the side of the door, mostly so he wouldn't knock it out of the way when the door opened.
That was good, right?
Once he tweaked the gift's positioning one more time, he stared at the door. Zebulon wasn't entirely sure about procedure with these mystery gifts, but he figured that the gifter should probably be a mystery too, right? He shrugged, did a quick knock on the door, and briskly walked the other way.
SSBrosB
I wrote this as a solo--but if you want to reply, Tom can notice Zebulon leaving or something. :D
