It’s the sweetest season of all.

Don’t tell the other reindeer about this!

BuzzFeed Blue / Via youtube.com

‘Cause we all know composing a text to a girl you like is one of life’s greatest challenges.

Online dating and text dating can be a pain in the ass. But don't worry, "What Should I Text Back", by BuzzFeed After Party, is here to tackle this debacle one clueless dater at a time.

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Meet Elvis, he recently met a gal who is "really cute and really cool" ...and he maybe developed a little bit of a crush. However, he may have encountered a bump in the dating road. We all know that shit can be super rocky.

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It was time for Elvis to get some advice from our dating panel on what he should text back! Steven chimed in with this little blurb of confidence.

BuzzFeed After Party / Via youtube.com

Next it was time to check in with an expert. The crew video chatted with a professional... and her biggest piece of advice was:

BuzzFeed After Party / Via youtube.com

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Today we’re gonna wrap presents!

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As decided by you!

BuzzFeed

Sarah Hyland At Paley Fest 2015

With 1614 "Fab" votes.

Parisa/FAMEFLYNET PICTURES

Jennifer Hudson At Nickelodeon’s 28th Annual Kids’ Choice Awards

With 1624 "Fab" votes.

KM/FAMEFLYNET PICTURES

Jessica Alba At The Independent School Alliance For Minority Affairs Impact Awards Dinner

With 1629 "Fab" votes.

Parisa/FAMEFLYNET PICTURES

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“My mom made me eat rotten cheese-flavored Harry Potter jelly beans when I got in trouble.”

KLTA TV

"Once I was forced to hug every tree in the backyard because I told my mom I hated yard work. We had over 30 trees."

—Adrienne Cambria, Facebook

"I was terrified of the chicken we kept in our yard. Whenever I was bad, my mom sent me out with a tortilla to feed it. The thing chased me when it saw food, so I always ran away from it crying, while dropping little pieces of tortilla."

—Piddlez

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“I’m so bad at online dating!”

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Hanging all the meowstletoe.

This cat who wants to be just like Santa when he grows up.

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This cat who didn't know garland could look THIS majestic.

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And this other cat who's been waiting patiently under the tree for the past week.

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This cat who's desperately been trying to get some intel on Santa from Rudolph.

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“I believe I am providing comfort for the ones who need it,” Lesley Shiels told BuzzFeed News.

Witch and spiritual medium Lesley Shiels says she has been speaking to spirits since childhood, but last Christmas she started sharing their messages on Facebook.

Facebook / A Voice From Beyond / Via Facebook: A

"I did it last year for the first time," Shiels told BuzzFeed News. "I had a spirit ask me if they could leave a message for Christmas and so it started from there."

At Christmas, she recently told the Newcastle Chronicle, she finds those in the afterlife to be especially active.

Shiels decided to begin posting the messages she says she receives on Facebook in the hope that they would make their way to the right person.

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Facebook: permalink.php

"There are so many people on Facebook so it's a great way to spread them," she said.

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“I can see why this one did not stand the test of time”

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CAN’T. HANDLE. THE. CUTENESS.

This guide dog puppy who's wearing a mini harness to prepare him for his big boy harness.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME.

guidedogs.org / Via reddit.com

The Frenchie puppy who tried hard to get a smug cat out of his bed.

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Roo, the two-legged rescue puppy from England who people mistake for a kangaroo.

Facebook: Safe-rescue-dogs-needing-homes

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Jason Merritt / Getty. Andrew Richard / BuzzFeed

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?

Pee probably. Then I'm on the hunt for food and iced coffee with some water thrown in there to survive and stuff.

What's the one word you are guilty of using too often?

Baby

What is the last thing you searched for on Google?

I saw one of those car Karaoke James Corden things with Rod Stewart and forgot how much of a badass he was so looked him up and all of his bossness.

Who is the last person that called or texted you?

I went holiday shopping with my homie Nick tonight and we bought these lamps as gifts for our families that are really cool that you put together and you can make them in a bunch of different ways. Apparently he tried putting his together and said it was impossible and he was dying laughing and we couldn't possibly give them as gifts but I still stand strong with my choice.

What's the wallpaper on your phone and/or computer?

Someone I love a lot.

What was the last awkward situation you were in and how did you handle it?

Omg we had a gig with Becky G and we've had a few gigs with her so we've gotten friendly so we were talking about how she had to fly a private plane to her next gig that day and I said, "Man those planes scare me. The last time I was on one I legitimately thought I was gonna die." And she goes, "Thanks now I'm even more excited about it." Bahahahaha. Definitely wrong thing to say in that situation.

What is your TV guilty pleasure?

Going back to the last text thing, Nick texted me again saying he built it and sent me a picture and it looks great so I'm glad I stuck with it haha. TV guilty pleasure would have to be the amount of stand-up specials I watch before I go to bed. I just love Kevin Hart, Kat Williams, old Eddie Murphy specials.

What's the first CD you bought?

Ooo good question. It was a Billy Joel CD. I forget which one.

Andrew Richard / BuzzFeed

And what music are you currently listening to?

Been listening to Alabama Shakes’ record a ton and also Chris Stapleton’s record. Damn that man can sing.

What is the one food you cannot resist?

Crisp watermelon. Just cold and perfectly crisp. It's my weakness.

What movie makes you laugh the most?

Van Wilder. No shame.

What toppings do you like on your pizza?

I love veggie pizza, lame AF woot woot. Although there's this spot in NYC I've always been obsessed with that makes this artichoke slice that's like an artichoke dip on top of a pizza. Heavenly.

What drives you absolutely crazy?

Impolite & ungrateful people.

What was your first online screen name?

Monkeym775

What’s the last thing you copied & pasted on your phone?

These questions into my notes to write my answers.

What’s your favorite curse word?

Depends the situation. I like a good old "fuck."

Andrew Richard / BuzzFeed

What's your favorite emoji?

Pick one: Kittens or puppies?

Puppies

New York or Los Angeles?

New York

Twitter or Instagram?

Instagram

Bacon or Nutella?

Nutella

Britney or Christina?

Britney

Coffee or tea?

Iced Coffee

NSYNC or BSB?

NSYNC

2am or 2pm?

2am

Beyonce or Rihanna?

Queen Bey but Rihanna is also bae.

Netflix and chill or just Netflix?

Chill then Netflix then more chill.

Hannah Montana or Lizzie McGuire?

Lizzie McGuire

And finally: tell us a secret.

I'm naked.

MAX's new EP Wrong is now available on iTunes!

Andrew Richard / BuzzFeed

Will your science skills hold up?

Comedy Central / Alex Kasprak / BuzzFeed / Via images-cdn.moviepilot.com

Chris Pratt from Jurassic Park, Parks and Rec, or Guardians?

Universal

NBC

Marvel

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The case of the princess’s floating head.

On Friday, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (Wills and Kate) released a new photo of their gorgeous family just in time for Christmas. As per usual, they all looked absolutely perfect.

Chris Jeff/Kensington Palace / Via Twitter: @KensingtonRoyal

Wait a minute. Let's zoom in here.

Chris Jeff/Kensington Palace

Closer still...

Chris Jeff/Kensington Palace

What on earth is happening here with Princess Charlotte?!

Chris Jeff/Kensington Palace

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Mark Stambler had just put a batch of bread in the oven when he got the news. It was August, and Good Eggs — the startup that’d been delivering his award-winning, organic loaves throughout Los Angeles for more than two years — was shutting down service in the region, effective the next delivery day, the email informed him. It would also pull out of Brooklyn and New Orleans and lay off nearly 140 employees, out of a workforce that was once more than 300. It had grown too fast, the company admitted, and was making mistakes.

Mark Stambler

Stephen Zeigler

Stambler’s operation, Pagnol Boulanger, is just him and a part-time assistant working out of Stambler’s Los Feliz home. He even stone-grinds the flour for his traditional French sourdoughs himself. He is, in other words, exactly the kind of producer the delivery startup wanted on its roster: homespun, high-quality, authentic, small. And Good Eggs, the 62-year-old baker said, “frankly seemed like a godsend. There’s no way I could have distributed my bread to all the people who live in the greater Los Angeles area.” Customers could go online and order groceries from a number of local producers, and four times a week, Stambler would drop off his signature loaves, still warm, at Good Eggs’ warehouse in the morning, to be delivered by company employees that day. No longer.

Good Eggs was founded in July 2011 in San Francisco. The two software developers behind it wanted to build an efficient way for small farmers and producers to reach consumers who were interested in fresh, beautiful ingredients but didn’t necessarily have the time to hunt them down at a farmers market or a grocery store (which probably wouldn’t carry them to begin with). It was a promising idea, well-positioned at the white-hot Venn-diagram center of some of the biggest themes in tech right now: tech-enabled on-demand delivery, food, eye-popping funding rounds. Good Eggs started operating on a limited basis in the Bay Area in 2012, and by the end of the following year, it had expanded to full service there, opened three additional hubs around the country, and was on its way to hiring hundreds of employees. To date, it has raised almost $53 million in venture capital.

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But by Good Eggs’ own admission — and as Stambler’s sudden email indicated — building the business was immensely, unexpectedly difficult. On-demand delivery, perishable inventory, strict regulations, fluctuating prices, and city-specific quirks added up to a host of logistical challenges that can’t always be neatly predicted or solved by software. At the same time, Good Eggs is up against a slew of rivals: Ingredient- and grocery-delivery startups like Blue Apron, Plated, Instacart, HelloFresh, Gobble, and FreshDirect; precooked meal services such as Seamless, Caviar, and Sprig; and behemoths like Amazon, Google, and Uber, which are getting into food delivery with a massive infrastructural head start. In other words, the company was seeking to enter an enormous industry with a uniquely convoluted supply chain and a history that’s literally as old as farming itself — and it was hoping to do so rapidly, in the face of heavy competition.

The business of disrupting food is hard. The business of disrupting anything is hard.

Good Eggs, for its part, says it’s committed to sticking around and eventually expanding again, having recently introduced original recipes and faster delivery. This month, it replaced its co-founder and CEO, Rob Spiro, with Bentley Hall, who’s been working in the food industry for about a decade. The company may well survive.

But its August stumble is illustrative, not just for the Blue Aprons and AmazonFreshes of the world, but for any company hoping to make big changes in the physical world. The business of disrupting food, as Spiro and Stambler and Hall all surely now know, is hard — but the truth is, the business of disrupting anything is hard. Tech utopianism and Silicon Valley success stories like those of Uber and Airbnb have taught a generation of would-be entrepreneurs that turning an entire entrenched industry on its head is as easy as combining a smart idea, good intentions, seed money, market research, and elbow grease. But Uber and Airbnb are the exceptions rather than the rule, and Good Eggs’ tumultuous history to date is an object lesson for the entire on-demand tech economy, a reminder of what can go wrong when a startup tries to grow too big, too quickly. Move fast and break things is as good a mantra as any for a software company, but maybe not when moving fast means upheaving a centuries-old system nearly overnight, and when those breakable things aren’t zeroes and ones but potatoes and eggs.

Before Good Eggs existed, Spiro spent a year after Yale University harvesting heirloom tomatoes and eggs from pastured chickens on a family friend’s farm in the lower Hudson Valley. He still speaks of the experience in the devotional language of a convert.

“When you see that firsthand on a farm, you realize very viscerally how transformative it is for your health, for the land, for people eating it, for the community that builds around it,” Spiro told me in early November, when he was still the CEO. We were on the top floor of Good Eggs’ 56,000-square-foot warehouse, which is physically part of, though not affiliated with, a produce distribution center in San Francisco’s blue-collar Bayview neighborhood. Below us were walk-in coolers full of cauliflower and squash, shelves of pasta and crackers, and employees driving off with the day’s final deliveries, packed in Good Eggs’ signature brown grocery bags.

“It’s just, like, plain and simple better for everybody, better for the world, and the food tastes a lot better,” Spiro added. “Once you realize that, and have that aha moment about where good food comes from and how it’s grown and made, it’s very hard to go back. And if you want to eat that way and you’re living in the Bay Area, it’s relatively easier than it is in other places, but you still have to hustle to get the best kind of food.”

A few years would pass before Spiro returned to agriculture. In 2007, he co-founded Aardvark, a social search site that was acquired by Google for a reported $50 million in 2010. Spiro worked as a product manager on Google+ for a year before leaving to start Good Eggs along with Alon Salant, who’d helped found the web and mobile development firm Carbon Five.

Food is a massive industry, one that generated $643 billion in sales in the U.S. alone in 2013; that estimate doesn’t include restaurants and bars, which contributed an additional $543 billion. Salant and Spiro sensed that customers wanted more convenient ways of getting it. Although e-commerce has traditionally made up a small slice of grocery sales, a recent Nielsen survey of 30,000 people worldwide found that one-quarter were ordering groceries online, and more than half were willing to do it. The duo also saw that consumers were becoming ever more health-conscious and placing more value on unprocessed foods. Between 2004 and 2014, the number of farmers markets nationwide skyrocketed from 3,700 to 8,300, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Instagram: @goodeggs

Good Eggs is right at the nexus of those trends, a clear product of the Bay Area's food culture and tech ethos. What further sets it apart is an emphasis on customer choice. Instead of physically visiting a single farmers market, or accepting whatever happens to be available in a community-supported agriculture (CSA) box, Good Eggs shoppers select from a cornucopia of goods from a variety of producers: gluten-free bread, grass-fed beef, raw milk, wild sea scallops, pies, organic cranberries and kale, all showcased in lust-inducing photos on Good Eggs' website. “Our intent is to replace your trip to the supermarket,” Spiro said.

After months of research, Spiro and Salant held their pilot launch party in July 2012, on the streets of an open-air farmers market in San Francisco’s Mission District. It expanded delivery to the entire Bay Area in February 2013, then opened shop in New Orleans and Los Angeles in June, and Brooklyn in November. In 2014 alone, the company’s producers tripled from 300 to almost 1,000.

Good Eggs designed its business to ease the burden of billing, delivery, and marketing for producers. Its software compiles orders and customer information for food-makers, and, internally, the company uses data-driven algorithms to predict how much of a product will be needed on a certain day. (Until recently, Good Eggs delivered orders two days after they were placed.)

Spiro said this system is “10 times more capital-efficient” than that of a typical grocer, mostly because it dramatically cuts down on the problem of “shrink,” the industry term for produce that’s delivered to supermarkets but ultimately isn’t sold. One study estimates that 12 billion pounds of fresh fruit and vegetables annually go to waste this way in the U.S.

One of Good Eggs’ first L.A. producers was Stambler, who’s been baking bread at home in Southern California since 1977. In early 2013, before the L.A. hub was even up and running, the general manager invited him to bring some loaves to her home. As they discussed the concept over mouthfuls of fluffy sourdough, he was sold. “When they told me … they were going to market my bread, and get it out to customers, and collect payment from them, and deposit it in my bank account with no effort on my part, I was just in heaven,” he said.

The praise came almost as quickly as the growth. The New York Times’ Jenna Wortham raved, “There’s just one word for the food from Good Eggs that successfully made its way into my kitchen: phenomenal!” Wired declared that Good Eggs “is here to provide the much-needed tech and software support to the local food movement,” and famed Bay Area chef and “slow food” movement pioneer Alice Waters endorsed it. Forbes put Spiro on its “30 Under 30” list in food and wine in 2014. USA Today nominated the company for Entrepreneur of the Year.

Stephanie M. Lee / BuzzFeed News

Time and again, Good Eggs’ leaders cast it as an agent in a broader movement. Consumption, they said, was not just financial and physical, but emotional — political, even, in that it said something about your values. “I love that, the concept of being empowered by what you consume,” Max Kanter, a community manager who helped launch the L.A. hub, told the culinary magazine Life & Thyme. “It’s really easy to go into a grocery store and be bombarded by marketing to feel empowered, but the products you’re buying are coming from all over the country. With Good Eggs, you can come to events and meet people, you can e-mail the farmers. We provide a connection you don’t get when you go to the grocery store.”

Along the way, Good Eggs sold investors like Index Ventures, Baseline Ventures, and Sequoia Capital on its vision and raised $52.5 million, according to the company. And Stambler was pleased with the company, which generated a steady and increasing percentage of his monthly income — 20% by the end, or about $240 for 60 loaves. He so enjoyed hanging out with the rapidly growing staff that he routinely baked them an extra loaf. He’d unload his deliveries at a 9,000-square-foot facility in a former Hostess bakery by the L.A. River; as large as it was, the staff was planning to move into a space more than twice that size — 20,000 square feet — within the same building. In a room that once churned out processed sweets, there were now young people lounging at desks and couches, working on their MacBooks by lamplight, and chatting about local food all day, Stambler recalled. This was a group who loved what they were doing.

In L.A., the trouble began, as it so often does, with traffic. The city’s perpetually clogged highways are a secret to no one, including Meg Glasser, who in the spring of 2013 was the first employee at the hub, and, eventually, its general manager. Still, she didn’t grasp just how bad the congestion was, or what it would mean for simple decisions like which day to do Good Eggs’ initially once-a-week deliveries on: Wednesday.

That was the day of the popular Santa Monica Farmers Market. Good Eggs would take orders online on Sunday and Monday, pick up produce at the market Wednesday morning, and bring it to customers that day, so it was as fresh as possible.

Stephanie M. Lee / BuzzFeed News

As it turns out, Wednesday mornings are among the worst times to drive in L.A. (although Friday is technically the all-around worst), according to an analysis by traffic data firm INRIX. Glasser’s team quickly discovered how hard it was to traverse the sprawling region to make a delivery window of a few hours. Good Eggs eventually stopped picking up food from the Santa Monica market, but “even two years later, Wednesday was always our biggest day because our original customers came on Wednesday,” Glasser said. “It created future challenges for us that we could have never anticipated.”

Why didn’t someone at headquarters better research traffic patterns before L.A. took the plunge? Glasser appreciates that she and her staff had freedom to experiment with new ideas, like delivering to the downtown area by bike. But “there probably should have been more guidance early on,” she acknowledged. “The model really should probably be honed in — I wouldn’t say perfected, but honed — before you expand to other cities.”

Other hubs had their own region-specific challenges — like climate. “California can grow lettuce more or less all year long; their climate’s much milder,” said John Bartlett of Bartlett Farm, a flower, produce, and egg farm north of New Orleans. But the South’s more extreme temperatures mean farmers there have relatively short windows to produce a lot of quality food.

Unpredictable day-to-day weather also complicates life for growers like the Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative, whose produce was on Good Eggs before it actually came out of the fields. “From the time they order it until it’s harvested, there could be a rainstorm,” said Nick Tyrrell, the former New York City sales representative for the Pennsylvania collective. “Even an inch of rain can really affect the harvest for the next day.” When farmers couldn’t provide the promised goods, Good Eggs would have to quickly track down substitutes or refund customers. “Whenever companies come into this sort of model and don’t already have a background in it,” Tyrrell said, “they don’t really grasp how often things like that can happen.” (Good Eggs spokesperson Ally Khantzis said that when it became clear that not all food could be locally sourced year-round in New York and Louisiana, those operations would use produce from other hubs in the off-seasons.)

And then there's the other, bigger, more existential question about Good Eggs: In a place like Brooklyn, is there a real need for it? “There’s already a food culture there and there’s so many other outlets to get stuff in people’s neighborhoods," Tyrrell said. "There’s not really any reason to have it delivered to your house."

Stephanie M. Lee / BuzzFeed News

youtube.com / Via BuzzFeed Violet

It’s about time we got a “raising both hands in celebration of finishing my gift wrapping” emoji.

The "nailed it" emoji:

Suggested use: When you want to remind people why you don't bother putting decorations up anymore.

Crystal Ro / BuzzFeed

The "currently avoiding people from my high school" emoji:

Suggested use: For your Facebook status while visiting your parents' house for the holidays.

Crystal Ro / BuzzFeed

The "dancing drunk uncle" emoji:

Suggested use: When you want everyone to come see what's happening in the living room...like, right now!

Crystal Ro / BuzzFeed

The "you couldn’t pay me to walk into the mall right now to go shopping" emoji:

Suggested use: When you need to remind your friends that the mall is the last place you want to be during the holidays.

Crystal Ro / BuzzFeed

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Not including your poofy hair.

But not all men, of course.

When they found new ways to mention the decline of men's rights.

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When their Tinder reviews weren't very convincing.

notchicken.tumblr.com / Via really-not-ok-cupid.tumblr.com

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