"John burned. They were going to see. They were going to see that the long years of wrongs done him had created a tremendous backlog of owed good luck, which was going to surge forward now, holy and personal." Gambling, losing and being a white roofer on the South Side: George Saunders remembers "Chicago Christmas, 1984." Related: Saunders discusses writing the story: "I think the main influence was the extreme Chicago version of satire. The way that all emotion was communicated through irony, punching in the ribs, insults to one’s mother, etc. And the way that all of this teasing masked deep, Eastern European levels of pathos, love for life, friend loyalty, etc."