Spoilers: TVD S4E9 "O' Come All Ye Faithful"

Yeah, it’s not Christmas. People who try to follow time on our show, their heads will explode in rapid succession, one neuron at a time. So we try not to be too specific about the timeline of the show, but this is the first time in four years where we’ve actually aired close enough to Christmas where we thought, ‘Well, gosh. Wouldn’t it be fun to have at least a little bit of holiday spirit woven through the episode?’

So it’s a charity event that the town is throwing with a winter wonderland theme that gives us that feeling of holidays have come to Mystic Falls. And the episode is very much about loyalty and relationships and some betrayals and all that kind of drama that tends to come around family holidays.