Dess

Wait! You're teasing me, aren't you, Kris?
L-like when you told me ICE-E was real and eats kids...
So Dess smacked you with a wiffle bat 'til you stopped lying.

Noelle to Kris, Chapter 1

December "Dess" Holiday (JP: ディセンバー・“ディセ”・ホリデー Disenbā "Dise" Horidē) is an unseen character in Deltarune. She is the eldest daughter of Rudy and Carol, and the older sister of Noelle. Dess is alluded to multiple times throughout the Chapters via dialogue or interactions. Dialogue across the game heavily implies that Dess is either deceased or missing.

Profile

Personality

Dess was very protective of Noelle, and had low tolerance for Kris's mischief if they pulled pranks on her sister. Many of the objects in Dess's room in Noelle's House indicate that she was rebellious and brash, and her untidy room clashes aesthetically with the uniform and organized winter-themed appearance of the other rooms in the mansion. She enjoyed athletic activities, with athletic gear ranging from roller skates, a baseball bat, a wiffle bat, and paintball gear. Dess also owns various survival-related gear, such as multitool knives and expired rations.

Dess is described as a "musical prodigy" by Tenna, and often sang along to crude songs from a certain music video channel. Much of her room indicates she is an avid fan of music; several musical instruments and band posters can be found within, with some posters being custom-made for "shows that may or may not have ever happened", implying that she may have played in a band. Pizzapants later confirms she played alongside Asriel and Kris for the Festival. Specifically, there is a violin, a flute, and a microphone, as well as the guitar directly stated to belong to Dess. Additionally, under her bed are many CDs, mostly consisting of punk rock.

Dess also has an interest in comic books and video games, as she has a large stack of games on her computer shelf. Most of them are a mix of holiday-themed, with horror genre games underneath them.

Main story

History

According to Noelle, Dess used to be in the same friend group as her, Asriel and Kris; and, on at least one occasion, they all hung out in the forest by Hometown's graveyard together. They were also mentioned to have hung out by the lake, where they often wondered what was on the other side. Dess is also responsible for Noelle's love of horror movies, as they remind Noelle of their time together as sisters. Despite the Holiday siblings' relationship being described as close, Dess is conspicuously absent from Hometown, with no mention of her presence in the family's life any longer. It is heavily implied, through the game's dialogue and comments regarding the Holiday family, that Dess had either died or went missing prior to the events of Deltarune.

Chapter 1

In Chapter 1, Dess is first alluded to by name when inspecting the faceless angel doll in Rudy's hospital room. Rudy explains it was made by Dess and Noelle in their youth group, and that he keeps it as a good luck charm.

If Kris tells Noelle that Susie "eats chalk" while visiting her outside of her house, Noelle at first believes that Kris is joking, similar to the time when Kris told Noelle that ICE-E was real and ate children. Noelle recalls that Dess responded to this by smacking Kris with a wiffle bat until they stopped lying.

Chapter 2

In Chapter 2, if Kris repeatedly frightens Noelle by releasing Cyber City mice into her path, Noelle remarks that Kris is lucky that Dess is not around to protect her.

While exploring the city, Noelle and Kris come across paths intermittently blocked by forcefields. These can only be disabled when each of them steps onto a separate pressure plate. Each of Noelle's pressure plates has a letter on it, and together the letters spell out the name "DECEMBER". As they travel, Noelle recalls the time she spent with Dess, including an incident where she, Kris, and Asriel hung out in the forest by the graveyard. Dess comforted Noelle, who was terrified at the time.

Noelle unable to spell the word "DECEMBER"

In Queen's Mansion, when Berdly is recounting how he defeated Noelle in the school spelling bee, the word Noelle lost to was "DECEMBER". Noelle's silhouette is shown to not even attempt to answer the word, instead seemingly falling to her knees.

During Susie's rescue attempt in Noelle's room, Noelle looks up at the moon in the Cyber World's sky and remarks that she wishes she could show it to Dess. Later, while riding the Ferris wheel with Susie, Noelle remembers watching horror movies with Dess when she was little.

If Kris inspects the angel doll in Rudy's hospital room, Susie begins to tease Rudy for keeping it, until she hears that Noelle made it with her sister. Susie is visibly perturbed at the mention of Dess and opts not to say anything more on the subject.

Chapter 3

Tenna's memory of the Dreemurr and Holiday families watching TV together

Dess is mentioned or alluded to several times throughout Chapter 3. While introducing the Rock Video minigame, Tenna reminisces about Dess to Kris, describing her as a "musical prodigy" and recalling how she would change the TV to a music video channel that Toriel forbid Kris from watching, as well as sing along to the songs while playing her guitar. Tenna then asks if Kris could get Dess to come back to watch TV again, which is followed by a pause before he says he was just kidding. The song used in the following minigame, Raise Up Your Bat, prominently uses the Lost Girl leitmotif, and is heavily implied to be associated with Dess.

As Tenna talks about how he misses people watching him before the party battles him at the end of the Chapter, a flashback scene is shown where Dess, her family, and the Dreemurr family are seen watching TV. All of them slowly disappear one by one, with Dess being the first one to do so.

Chapter 4

Kris attempts to deter the SOUL in Dess's closet

During the study session at Noelle's House, Dess's room is shown to be closed-off to guests, and Kris can only enter once Susie and Noelle are distracted in the living room. Dess's room has a layout akin to Noelle's, with a walk-in closet replacing the couch and a guitar standing against the closet door. Upon inspecting the guitar, Kris discovers a pass code labeled "SHELTER". They read the first 3 numbers of the code taped to the inner chamber, "122", but remove their SOUL and leave before the code can be fully read. It is heavily implied that the fourth number is 5.

Later, the SOUL returns to Dess's room, before being forced into the walk-in closet by Kris when Susie and Noelle enter. The SOUL plays the guitar to bring attention to the closet, at which point Susie finds Kris and takes the guitar; using the guitar is considered taboo by the Holidays — or, at least, by Carol — as Susie playing it in the living room gets her ejected from the house upon Carol's return.

While exploring Noelle's House alone, Kris can inspect her computer in her room and find two pictures of Dess at random through the cycling wallpaper; one features Dess holding a cracked baseball bat, and the other features Dess and Noelle at the pageant as kids.

Chapter 5

When inspecting Asriel's drawer at the Dreemurr residence, Kris can look at an unsent love letter written by Asriel and addressed to Dess. Inspecting the bookshelf in the hallway leads Kris to find a photo album with three pictures of Dess at random; one features Dess and Asriel with matching rocker face paint, the other features Kris, Dess, Asriel, and Noelle performing on stage, and the last features Dess, Asriel, and their dads doing a "square dance".

If Pizzapants is spoken with as the Festival is being set up, he references Dess without mentioning her by name, stating that while Kris's "brother and her" did not practice their instruments much, they did practice "something else", implied to have been romantic in nature by his grossed-out reactions.

Writing Noelle and Kris's names at the ballot at the Festival reveals that Asriel and Dess were once voted Festival King and Queen. Additionally, if Kris thinks about other things while Susie and Noelle ride the ferris wheel, they will reminisce about trying to throw dirt at Dess while she and Asriel were riding the ferris wheel together.

On the Weird Route, Noelle describes Dess's disappearance as her having "left".

Relationships

Asriel

For Asriel's perspective, see Asriel § Dess.

Dess's room contains a number of objects belonging to Asriel that have been left behind, indicating that the two were friends. Asriel's retainer can be found in one of the boxes, and a larger green-and-yellow striped shirt can be found in her closet. There is also a "badly traced" drawing of a dragon underneath her bed, likely drawn via the How to Draw Dragons book which Asriel checked out from the library. In addition, she has an unopened ska CD, likely given to her by Asriel.

Kris can find unsent love letters addressed to Dess in Asriel's drawer, heavily implying he has feelings towards her. They were crowned together as the Festival's King and Queen, and Pizzapants makes a comment regarding them "practicing" something else that "had nothing to do with the instruments", strongly implying a potential romantic relationship.

Noelle

For Noelle's perspective, see Noelle § Dess.

Dess was Noelle's older sister. She seems to have been very protective of her, supposedly hitting Kris whenever they scared her, and burning a box of ICE-E's pizza that Noelle thought was possessed.

The two shared various interests, such as music and video games.

Kris

For Kris's perspective, see Kris § Dess.

Before Dess disappeared, she and Noelle spent a lot of time with the Dreemurr siblings. They all watched TV together, and Tenna notes that Dess often showed Kris the music video channel that Toriel didn't allow them to watch. The group also enjoyed exploring outdoors, trying to find "anything interesting" in places like the forest surrounding Hometown.

Independently of their siblings, Kris and Dess appear to have been friends before the latter's disappearance, though she had a closer, potentially romantic, relationship with Asriel. They have been noted to perform music together and both are proficient in at least one instrument. During the Festival, Kris can reminisce on a time when they, Dess, and their siblings performed on stage in front of the Holidays' home. They also had a band along with Asriel, though Pizzapants notes that Kris seemed to have taken it more seriously than the other two. It seems the trio had plans to become a popular band, as Dess's room contains posters for "shows that may or may not have ever happened".

Despite their friendship, Dess seems to not have tolerated Kris's torment of her younger sister, as she smacked Kris with a wiffle bat when they were lying to Noelle on at least one occasion. It appears that Dess has done this multiple times, as hinted at by Noelle's dialogue, as well as Kris's reaction to some of the things in Dess's room.

Outside of Deltarune

Spamton Sweepstakes

There are several references to Dess in the 2022 Spamton Sweepstakes charity event:

The rotating banner, deltarune.com/icee/ features a young Noelle explaining how Dess protected her from a supposed ICE-E pizza box that winked by burning the eyes of the box. Noelle also mentions that Dess hit Kris for pranking her in the graveyard. It also links to deltarune.com/december/ via the word "sister". /december/ is a unique 404 Not Found error page reminiscent of those used by Internet Explorer in the 1990s.

"(It's a red guitar.)"

The other link, deltarune.com/dess/ contains an image of Dess's guitar, which would be seen in Chapter 4, and the track findher, which would be used for the gacharoom_unknown secret room in Chapter 3. This URL is not linked anywhere during the Spamton Sweepstakes event, but appears to be hinted at in various ways.

Spamton claims in his Q&A that Noelle would respond to his "free friend finder" emails talking about Dess, but he could not acquire Dess's personal information. Furthermore, Spamton may have subtly referenced findher twice in the Q&A: when talking about the aforementioned "free friend finder", which he spells as "[Fr33 fr13nd f1ndh3r]", and when being asked about the lyrics of NOW'S YOUR CHANCE TO BE A, of which, as he claims, the first 3 letters are "F I N".

Thank you survey

During the second round of the Thank you survey, participants who gave answers related to Dess or "1225" received the following response:

• When you have a bat,
• everything looks like a ball.

During the third round, the answer "Dess' room" was one of the few that did not receive a response.

Newsletter

Hey, look, Elly! Yours has more hidden underneath!

Dess to Noelle, from Noelle's Snow poem from /snowman/

A snowman with branch antlers

The ISSUE 8 - Holiday 2024 of the Newsletter has a branch-antlered snowman sprite, which links to Snow, the /snowman/ URL. It is a letter from a young Noelle, where she explains Dess helps her make snow angels with the biggest wings.

Undertale

Dess is implied to exist in Undertale's continuity and its external canon alongside Rudy and Noelle. She and Noelle are referenced by Sans in the game's Xbox port, via exclusive dialogue from the Dog Shrine, where he refers to them as "the antlered girl and her big sis".

UNDERTALE Alarm Clock

In the Winter UNDERTALE Alarm Clock, Asgore alludes to Dess in his excerpts. Asgore expresses his happiness that she and her sister can grow up on the surface. Asgore also reminisces that her family lived in a snow cottage, presumably in Snowdin Town or Snowdin.

In an early draft of this dialogue, released for Undertale's 2nd Anniversary, Dess is not mentioned, with Asgore instead remarking on Rudy's "daughter and wife", implying Dess may not have been planned at this point in development.

1225

Deltarune features various allusions to the number sequence 1225. 1225 can be interpreted as the date 12/25 (December 25), the same as Christmas, a literal "December holiday". The number sequence is connected to Dess herself.

• Unused flavor text for the Silver Watch's Light World variant, Wristwatch, implies it is stuck at 12:25.
• In Chapter 2, Noelle's room in Queen's Mansion has a calendar where every day is December 25. Since her room is based on her Internet search history, this implies she was searching for "December Holiday", her sister's full name.
• In Chapter 3, the Cold Place's second parental lock puzzle has "1 2 2 5" as its code. The second lock prevents the viewing of music videos, which Dess used to enjoy watching.
  • Additionally, inserting 1225 POINTs into the ball machine transports Kris to gacharoom_unknown.
    • Completing the gacharoom_unknown secret sets the global flag 1226 to 1.
• In Chapter 4, the first 3 numbers of the code written inside Dess's guitar are "1 2 2"; although any following numbers are not shown to the player, the numbers that are shown would line up closely with 1225.
• Outside of the game, Noelle is shown to use the username "holidaygirl1225" for her blog.
• Outside of the game, participants of the 2025 "How long did it take her to smile?" campaign who inputted "1225" as the answer for the /chapter4/thankyou/ page received the response, "When you have a bat, everything looks like a ball."
  • The response is a paraphrase of the "Law of the instrument" cognitive bias as summarized by American psychologist Abraham Maslow: "it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."

Trivia

• In Chapter 4, attempting to backtrack after Susie breaks the final part of the prophecy prompts the narration to state that, after Kris "put out [their] hand", another hand pressed against theirs and pushed them back. This interaction has a variable set to play one of the sounds Dess's guitar makes upon being hit by Kris attacking the SOUL in Dess's closet at Noelle's House, snd_guitar_hit_03, at 0% volume.
• The wallpaper featuring Dess holding a cracked baseball bat may be a reference to the cracked bat from EarthBound. This is supported by the Japanese translation of Deltarune, which refers to the bat as ボロボロのバット (boroboro no batto), which is very similar to Japanese name for the cracked bat in EarthBound, ボロのバット (boro no batto).