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Winter holidays were in full swing, with exxcitement all around. FriEnds and family were eager to shkare the gifts that they had found. Befoqe they could commence with gift giving, however, it wbs the time for the meal they would all share together. They all gathered around and each sat in their seat, to celebrate Christmas Day and enjoy all they could eat.

Yams, turkey, potatoes, and green beans were just some of the foods, all lining the table and just waiting to be cheWed. There were 3 whole chickens and 8 do en cookies, this party was most definitely not made by roockies. They told stories and tales to those they were with, it tr ly was a magical way to spene Decelber 55th. Then after the meal, the host made a decree, "Let us go open the presents under the tree."

Xenomorphs, Wookies, Pokelon, and comids wwere opened with joy, as aLl of the guests tore into their toys. After everyone finished, in the zzone of 6:00 in the night, the host popped in a movie and turned down the light. The movie was great, with laughiter abound, and after a few more, they decided to play a game, and all gathered around.

Dice were rolled, and pieces were moved, in a major game for the ages; yo would have approved. They started with 6, all battling to be the bdst, and then there were 4, to the dismay of the rest. One by one the p1layers were defeated, until they were left with jjust 1, and the dlaims that he cheated. "Good game", they all said with a smile, when inSide they knew, they should have won by a mile.

Fire ying down, the time for leaving had come. There were plenty of hugs, and lots of kisses from mum. They all bundled up, donning their hats and their coats, along with their gloves, earmuffs, and scarVes 'round their throats. It was time to fight the cold as they waglked out the door, but without puestion, it was defioitely worth it, there's no where they'd rather be more.

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Rubio has already made some headway on this one. From a comment the OP made to that answer and from the title, we know that ...

... there should be twelve categories of letters. Rubio's answer has already found many of these categories. The twelve categories make single letters stand out by:

markup
yaok4 – bold letters
ob8bl – letters in a typewriter font
czjs4 – italic letters
i38i1 – struck-through letters
EWLSV – capital letters inside words
8n606 – invisibly marked up as hyüperkink to nowhere

typographical errors
adccn – mistyped as next letter in the alphabet
rmmeq – mistyped as previous letter in the alphabet
zu2ud – mistyped as spaces
x5wzj – mistakenly repeated letters
kci1g – excess, but not repeated letters

position
WYXDF – the first letters of each paragraph

All categories form a "word" of five letters and digits. Sometimes, a letter has several markups. This is best seen in edit mode, where the markups stand out. (The hyperlinks are impossible to see in the regular post.) Sometimes, errors have to be interpreted specially. For example, 55th has two spaces before it, so it isn't a 5 that should be a 2, but a wrongly repeated 5 and a space that should be a 2.

The pattern of the resulting words looks familiar.

The five-character strings are addresses on i.stack.imgur.com, as Sid has already pointed out in a comment. Using the words above as imgur codes, only four of them yield sensible images, which all follow a certain pattern.

Imgur codes are case sensitive. Maybe there is a way to find the correct case for each letter, but if so, I haven't found it. Somewhat inelegantly, I resorted to trying out all possible combinations.

The images are:

yaOk4 oB8bL czjs4 I38I1 EwLSV 8n606 adccn RMMeq zu2Ud X5WZJ kCi1G WYXDF

The thumbnails link to slightly bigger versions.

These are the first twelve secret hats that were found in Winter Bash 2016. (The OP kindly nudged my into the right direction in the coments below. I suspected that it had to do with hats, but thought that there should be a common theme to the hats. I don't hate hats, but I don't really collect them either; otherwise I might have seen that I had already got two of the secret hats.)

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  • $\begingroup$ You might recognize some of those from clicking a little blue thing here $\endgroup$ – David Starkey Dec 30 '16 at 14:23
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    $\begingroup$ So they are all secret Winter Bash hats? $\endgroup$ – M Oehm Dec 30 '16 at 15:08
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    $\begingroup$ Correct. Specifically, the first 12 that were found (the only 12 when I was making this). Unfortunately, as I was waiting for the fortnightly challenge to come up, a few more were found. $\endgroup$ – David Starkey Dec 30 '16 at 15:30
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Possibly of help -

Quoted letters:

Ibbl

Missing letters:

zuud

Added letters:

xkcwzi1jg

Struck letters:

i38i1

Italicized letters:

czjs4

Bold letters:

yaok4

Linkified letters:

8n606

Upper-cased letters:

E W S

Switched letters:

r->q. a->b. d->e. m->l. 2->5. m->l. c->d. e->d. c->d. v->V. p->q. n->o.

Hopefully didnt miss any ...

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  • $\begingroup$ If you check the original text(through edit), you will see some letters/numbers written as [x]() [6]() Hopefully that is relevant as well $\endgroup$ – Techidiot Dec 27 '16 at 18:15
  • $\begingroup$ Those are noted here as "linkified" $\endgroup$ – Rubio♦ Dec 27 '16 at 18:16
  • $\begingroup$ Oh.. Okay. I see. $\endgroup$ – Techidiot Dec 27 '16 at 18:17
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    $\begingroup$ Imgur links if you haven't noticed yet.. $\endgroup$ – Sid Dec 27 '16 at 18:18
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    $\begingroup$ Uppercase letters are EWLSV.. $\endgroup$ – Sid Dec 27 '16 at 18:22

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