‘The Vampire Diaries’ season 8, episode 7 photo: Damon’s not-so-merry Christmas

Who doesn’t love Christmas? It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and with that, it’s a time when television for whatever reason chooses to give us many holiday specials featuring characters who are in the process of acting completely miserable.

For more on that, just take a look at the photo above from Friday’s new episode of “The Vampire Diaries,” which despite being relatively happy on the surface, is certainly not if you have seen longer than a few seconds of the season so far.

Let’s start by handing down a specific reminder as to what is going on here: Damon’s been on a murderous tear, killing people (RIP Tyler in the worst way possible) and acting out the duties of his puppet-master Sybil, who in turn has been working to get out from underneath the spell of the devil Cade. She’s utterly controlled Ian Somerhalder’s character this entire time, but the tides could be changing given that she offered up both of the Salvatore brothers to Cade on this past episode as a means to spare Caroline and Alaric’s children from the fate.

For Damon, there’s gotta be a part of him that is miserable given that he is spending the holidays terrifying everyone and bringing souls to hell; we’re pretty darn sure that this is not what Nina Dobrev’s Elena wanted him to be doing while he waited for her to wake back up following Bonnie’s death down the line. Meanwhile, we presume that just about everyone else is going to be miserable seeing that this is a guy who they thought previously to be dead. Merry Christmas, everyone! While it’s unclear how Damon is going to be resurrected, here are a couple of viable theories:

-You’ve got Cade using some sort of devil magic on him; due to what he wants from him, there’s zero chance that he’s going to let this guy die at the moment.

-Melisandre shows up from “Game of Thrones.” Okay, this one probably isn’t going to happen.

Want some other “Vampire Diaries” goodness? Then head over here to see another preview for this episode in video form! (Photo: The CW.)