As part of the 2009-2010 holiday season a number of time-limited enhancements were made to Quake Live, including new festive skins, a new award and this level, Silent Night. The new medallion worked in a manner similar to the one awarded over Halloween to any player who completed a haunted match, being given to any gamer who played in this level and featuring the delightful tagline “Ho, Ho, Hol-ly Shit!”. The official line on the level is as follows:

“Ho, ho, ho! The holidays are upon us, and Santa has brought each of you a special present! For two weeks enjoy ‘Silent Night’, a holiday-themed remake of the popular arena ‘Distant Screams’ from Team Arena. During this time Santa himself along with his festive helper Vixen, will be playable character models across all game types.”

As described this level began as one of the terrain maps from Quake III: Team Arena, MPTERRA2, and is now kitted out with decorations including neon Christmas trees, snowmen, candy canes and baubles. Holiday CTF matches supported up to thirty two players battling across it's frost filled mountains underneath night skies of glistening aurora borealis, the turquoise-tinged northern lights commonly found in polar regions not just on earth, but many other planets with strong enough magnetic fields to support them.

The most significant change in layout here is that all the lakes in the level have frozen solid, which makes for faster gameplay when traversing the outer areas. The Christmas themed design varies, in some areas it works brilliantly and in others it's overly garish, especially in the central haste platform. There's even a few misaligned baubles in the bases you might be able to spot if you can stand still on the ice long enough to notice them.

As well as the familiar grenade auto-launcher traps and overloaded power-up and item selection there are a few modified areas including a ‘campers corner’ - a vantage point for picking off foes, one of many throughout the level atop towers and mountains, with a large brightly lit flourescent sign as shown.

Unfortunately the release of the map was marred by a number of glitches where the game character models could get stuck and/or drop into empty space in the void of the engine, predominantly in the mountainous areas and similar to that seen when using the no-clip command to fly throughout the levels.