Dess Holiday

Dess Holiday
Character Information
Relationships	Rudolph Holiday (father) Noelle Holiday (younger sister) Carol Holiday (mother) Asriel (childhood friend) Kris (childhood friend)

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

Dess to Noelle, in Noelle's poem

December "Dess" Holiday is an as-yet unseen character in Deltarune. She is the oldest daughter of Rudolph Holiday and Carol Holiday, and the older sister of Noelle Holiday. Dialogue spoken by Noelle in Chapter 2 heavily implies that she is either deceased or missing.

Profile

Personality

Very little is known for certain about Dess. However, according to Noelle, Dess was very protective of her when they were growing up together, often comforting Noelle in terrifying situations, or defending her from Kris's antics.

Main Story

What a strange moon...
It's like nothing I've ever seen before.
This world...
... I wish Dess could see this.

Noelle

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 Cemetery together. 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, suggesting that something happened to her prior to the events of Deltarune.

Chapter 1

Dess is first alluded to by name through an object that can be inspected in Rudy's hospital room: an angel doll that, Rudy explains, was made by Dess and Noelle in youth group. 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 also recalls that Dess once smacked Kris with a wiffle bat until they stopped lying.

Chapter 2

If Kris, intentionally or not, repeatedly frightens Noelle by releasing Cyber City mice into her path, Noelle remarks that Kris is lucky that Dess isn't around to protect her.

While exploring the city, Noelle and Kris come across paths that are intermittently blocked off by forcefields that can only be disabled when each of them steps onto a separate pressure plate. As they travel, the pressure plates spelling out "DECEMBER," 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 looks up at the moon in 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

Dess is shown in a flashback scene during Tenna's dialogue at the end of Chapter 3. She is shown sitting with her and Kris's family watching television, being the first to disappear in the flashback.

Chapter 4

Kris can enter Dess' bedroom. In the bedroom is Dess' guitar that contains a code, presumably for the bunker. The player reads the digits "122", until Kris rips the SOUL out of their body. (The code is speculated to be 1225 as this number is heavily associated with Dess.)

Trivia

• In Chapter 4, if you interact with the box of junk in Dess' room Asriel's retainers are there. Under her bed there is a drawing of a dragon (implied to look like Asriel's) and his shirt in her closet. They also share similar star shaped wall stickers.
• In Chapter 3, it is revealed that "Dess" is short for "December," keeping with the Christmas theme of the Holiday family. Other evidence for this is during the sequence in Chapter 2 where Noelle recalls spending time with Dess, Kris, and Asriel in the forest behind the graveyard, while the letters she steps on spell out "DECEMBER."
  • Noelle also froze on the word "December" during a spelling contest from Berdly's flashback.
  • 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 is searching for "December Holiday," her sister's full name.
• The first three numbers of the code hidden inside the red guitar were "1-2-2." The full code could be "1-2-2-5," which would line up with 12/25, the day of Christmas, which is a literal December holiday.
  • "1-2-2-5" is also the parental control lock for music videos featured in a puzzle in Chapter 3. This may be in reference to Dess being the reason that music videos are locked on the TV.
  • In Chapter 3, If there are 1225 POINTs inserted in the B-rank room's gumball machine, Kris gets transported into a looping maze room with a smaller machine in the middle. If Kris interacts with the machine, it releases a capsule with a small triangular item made out of lacque, presumably a guitar pick. If they attempt to take it, it slips through their hand, where they can no longer find it, nor their hand. The implications of this scene are unclear, but the number of POINTs being 1225 and findher.ogg playing in the background might imply that this is referencing an event that happened or may happen that involves Dess.
• The way Dess is described in Chapter 2, as well as comments regarding the Holiday family throughout the game heavily implies she died or went missing sometime before the events of Deltarune:
  • In Chapter 1, Noelle is unable to go home after she forgets her key, likely because no one is there to let her in.
  • Rudy claims that without him, Noelle doesn't have someone to protect her from her mother's strict behavior.
• Although they never make a physical appearance, Noelle and Dess are known to exist in the Undertale universe alongside their father. In the unused Undertale alarm clock dialogue, Asgore remarks that Rudy's daughters both get to grow up in the sunlight. In the Xbox version of the Dog Shrine in Undertale, Sans mentions "the antlered girl and her big sis," with the latter most likely referring to Dess.
  • The way that Sans phrases his reference to "the antlered girl" may imply that her sister, in contrast, does not have antlers. However, this is disregarded in Chapter 3's flashback, as her sprite portrays her with antlers.
    • There is a possibility that she only used a reindeer headband for Christmas, however the silhouette is hiding the fact.
  • In a draft of the alarm clock dialogue posted on September 15th, 2017, Asgore remarks about Rudy's "daughter and wife," suggesting that Dess may not have originally been planned to be a character.
• Dess appears to be fond of sports, particulary hockey and baseball, implied from the equipment seen lying around her room.
• Contrary to the rest of her family, she appear to wear shoes, as a pile of of them is seen in her closet.
  • Oddly, all of these are human-like shoes, which appear to not be fit for hooves.
• There are several references to Dess in the 2022 Spamton Sweepstakes charity event:
  • deltarune.com/icee links to deltarune.com/december in a reference to "my sister." /december/ is a unique 404 Not Found error page reminiscent of those used by Internet Explorer in the 1990s.
  • deltarune.com/dess contains an image of a guitar and the track findher.mp3, a guitar cover of Lost Girl. This may imply Dess plays the guitar. In Chapter 4, it is confirmed that Dess plays the guitar as we see the red guitar in her bedroom in the Holiday mansion.
  • Spamton claimed in a live Q&A that Noelle would respond to his "free friend finder" emails talking about Dess, but he could not acquire her personal information.
    • Furthermore, Spamton may have subtly referenced her theme's filename 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 FIN.
• The Holiday 2024 Undertale/Deltarune Newsletter features a passage written by Noelle mentioning her and Dess’s tradition of making snow angels and Dess kicking snow to make the wings on Noelle’s angel bigger.