With the holidays creeping up, most of us are bracing for crowded stores, tangled lights, and that annual internal debate over whether fruitcake is actually edible. But one southern Illinois lottery player just unlocked a much better seasonal surprise: the top prize on a $1,000,000 Holiday Gold scratch-off ticket.

“I’m a big fan of the holiday-themed tickets,” the winner said — the kind of person who actually enjoys seasonal scratch-offs the way some people enjoy peppermint-flavored everything. As soon as this year’s tickets hit the shelves, they and their mom went to check them out. One $20 ticket later, fate decided to show up wearing a Santa hat.

The ticket came from Sav-On Liquor & Wine inside a Phillips 66 gas station in Fairview Heights — 10040 Lincoln Trail, to be precise. The player bought it, handed it to their mom to scratch, and casually went home. Because sometimes life works best when you completely forget you might have just purchased a million-dollar rectangle of cardboard.

A few hours later, the phone rang. Mom was screaming. Not “the dog got out again” screaming — more like “you won a million dollars” screaming.

Naturally, the winner didn’t believe her. “There’s no way,” they thought. But the excitement in her voice pulled them out of whatever they were doing. They ran out the door so fast they didn’t even bother to close it.

“When I saw my mom and the ticket, it hit me — it was real,” they said. “We both started jumping up and down like kids who just discovered sugar for the first time.”

Sav-On Liquor & Wine, the store that sold the winning ticket, will collect a tidy $10,000 bonus — not a bad return for handing someone a piece of paper.

And the winner? The first move is simple and generous: “I’m splitting this prize with my mom and giving her half.”

According to the Illinois Lottery, 55 players this year have already won $1 million or more from scratch-off tickets. Yes — apparently these things do happen to real humans.

“I never expected something like this,” the winner said. “All I can say is — it really is possible.”