Diría que desperté pero eso es una mentira, en verdad no dormi ni un minuto, solo esperé a que el primer rayo de sol se fugara a través de mi cortina para tener la justificación de por qué ya era legítimo bajar. Corrí sin importarme el suelo frío picándome las plantas de los pies. Cuando llegué a la esquina previa a la sala donde estaba el árbol se escuchó un forcejeo como de algo pesado moviéndose junto con unos cascabeles. Se me aceleró el corazón al pensar que me había levantado lo suficientemente temprano como para presenciar el gran acontecimiento en vivo. Me hice animos para entrar sabiendo que interrumpiría el proceso del famoso involucrado; quien sabe y terminábamos siendo amigos o que, dada la amena interacción, decidiera dejarme un regalo más. Di tres pasos determinantes para adentrarme a la escena. Estaba mi mamá recogiendo platos y vasos de la noche anterior:

• Vaya, hasta que te levantas. Lucia se fue ayer con los niños, estabas tan pedo que quedaste en calidad de bulto y no iba a poder sacarte del carro ella sola. Rogelio ya estas grande como para que sigas haciendo estas cosas.

I pulled my shawl tighter around me as the cold wind blew. The sun was already setting, but finding fresh pine cones was more important. I’d just found the seventh one when I heard Ma calling me back. She chastised me as I rushed into the warm cabin. But I spied a smile on her face. Tonight was too important for lectures. I’d only get one more chance at it before my age betrayed me. Slipping off my snow covered boots I rushed to the fire place and threw the pine cones in. The scent would attract the good spirit. And if I was lucky she’d gift me with a trip. My last before I came off age. I rushed to my room. The time ticked slowly as I lay in my bed. Eyes closed. Lips moving in a wordless prayer. Please let me go again. Just one last time. A giggle penetrated the air. And the scent of pine filled the room. I opened my eyes to see Joy. The girl was dressed in green. Her skin was a warm brown. And her voice was like music as she coaxed me from my body. My spirit was light as it floated next to my sleeping form. But I could feel that the tether was even stronger than last years. “Have you been good?” The small girl asked as she circled me. “Shall I give you your last gift?” As always, I couldn’t respond. But her smile brightened all the same. She took my hand and off we flew. Out of my room. Up the chimney. And into the cold night air. I joined the other spirits of good children in my village. All of them danced with the snow swirling through the air. Below us creatures of shadow tried to snatch at our spirits. But evil could never fly as high as the innocent. And we remained safe as Joy led the remaining children out of harms way. And soon it was time to journey to the land of the spirits. There was a glorious feast as spirits danced around a bonfire filled with pine cones. My nose delighted in the smell. My ears loved the music of the spirits. And my feet could not help but dance with them. But I felt something tug at my heart. My limbs grew heavy. And my stomach throbbed. Suddenly Joy was at my side. “Your time has ended.” She said with sparkling eyes. “How exciting.” “But I don’t wish to grow old. I want to stay here.” She tilted her head. “But you will join us again.” I blinked at her. “I thought adults couldn’t come here.” Joy giggled. “Of course not. Their spirits are tied to their bodies too well. But when your body weakens you shall join us again. Just as you have many times before. That is if you’ve been good of course.” I looked at her. She seemed so happy. So certain that I’d join her. But below I could see the darkness reaching for me. “But how do I resist the darkness?” “Like you always have.” She touched my heart. “By finding your joy.” Pain exploded through my abdomen. And I sat up in bed. I was surrounded by shadow, all of it reaching for me. Screaming, I clutched the covers to me. A wet spot greeted me and I stopped . Had I wet the bed? Ma tore into my room, her candle making the shadows recede. She took one look at me and the dark red on my hands before flinging back the covers. I had indeed wet the bed. But it was a small splotch of red. Blood? It was silent for a moment. Then Ma started laughing. All I could do was stare as the shadows fled. But why would she laugh? “Finally, we’ll have an end to that superstitious behavior.” She clasped my shoulders. “From now on you are a woman and you shall not rely on a childish spirit.” “But the shadows…” She chuckled. “They’re weak to laughter, dear one. As long as you have joy in your heart they can’t harm you.” I touched my chest. It was still warm from Joy’s touch. Looking down again I felt a giggle burst forth. “I thought I was too old to wet the bed.” Ma joined me in laughter. And our joy lit up the room. I’d be certain to use Joy’s last gift well.

Dr. Bumbledon’s bulbous belly was so large that each time he tried to use the drainage system to deliver teenagers their monthly honey, he would have to yank his remarkable tummy through each drain. One time, he even had to ask for help on the street for strangers to help pull him out. Dr. Bumbledon however, was too proud to discard his prize possession. He vowed that he would never leave anything on his plate.

Word on the street was the he had a personal assistant to feed him his favourite nosh - which happened to be cheese. He loved all kinds of cheese - from goat’s cheese to cheddar, to Brie to Swiss.

Dr. Bumbledon was a big man (as you can imagine) with a great, big, black beard and thick, curly moustache. He had an abnormally small nose and thin eyebrows. He had a little hair left on his head, complete with an oval-shaped bald patch directly in the centre.

His clothing consisted of honeycomb patterned Pjs with a mustard baseball hat to cover his head. Lastly, he wore cowboy boots that unusually came in the colour of neon brown (if that was possible).

He was a rather jolly man, though if you caught him on a bad day he would grunt when you asked him anything to do with his job. It was a rather odd form of Russian roulette.

There were often plenty of rumours to do with Dr. Bumbledon and they were mostly related to his belly. Some said that he shoved sixteen pillows up his top and that he was a fraud to get teenagers to save the bee world. Others said that he would simply be fed grapes all day by his servant, Thomas. No one had ever seen Thomas of course, for it was all in people’s heads.

The teenagers that would be given honey wouldn’t eat it, as this was a different kind of honey. This honey, was only for decoration purposes (it is strictly forbidden to know why) and so people in Youngton village had a cellar, where they would store each jar of honey. After a while, you can imagine that people’s basements would soon be filled to the brim with the ‘honey-that-could-never-be-eaten-and-only-remained-for-aesthetic-purposes’. Well, you might wonder what the people of Younton village did with all the honey. Well, let me be straightforward.

The people of Youngton village threw the bottles of honey out on to the streets, causing the whole town the be caked in a mustard-covered substance.

You could say, that it was more of a pigsty than a village.

And you could only imagine how happy the bees are all year round.

“Why, do you hear that!?” The typical holiday mother said to the rose cheeked children.

It was not the sound of sleigh bells. Nor was it the sound of reindeer, or sleds. It was not the sound of some jolly laugh, or elves or any sort of Santa related nonsense.

Instead it was the sound of a World War 2 era Sherman tank. All of the kids ran excitedly outside in anticipation. Sure enough, the treads came scratching down the alleyway until the tank came to a stop, pointing the barrel towards the children.

A man with a typical crue cut popped open the hatch and pointed out to the children. “You have been targeted by MISSLE TOE!” The man announced… much like a killer robot. Then he pulled his leg up to expose a foot with a giant rocket launcher attached to his big toe. “Prepare for christmas!” He said.

Then the launcher shot out presents in neatly wrapped boxes at the children. Each of them scrambled to catch a present, some of them getting pushed backwards and onto their bottoms. When the show was over, Missle Toe said nothing and closed the hatch of the tank. Then the Sherman tank rolled on…

That was the tradition of old Missle Toe. Coming by to attack all the children with a bombardment of presents from his Sherman Tank.

Mrs. Chapman sat in her chair wondering what she could create to help others near Christmas. She struggled to get around. She wrote many letters and she loved stickers. Each day she began her day with devotions and prayer.

She asked her daughter, Laura, “Do you have any ideas of how I can help others?”

Laura said, “You can paint pictures or write encouraging notes.”

“That’s a wonderful idea!” Mrs. Chapman said as she threw popcorn in the air. “Mail could be a problem, but I could do neighbors and people from church.

“I’ll help with delivery,” said Laura.

“Thank you! This will be fun,” said Mrs. Chapman.

Mrs. Chapman picked people from the church directory and wrote encouraging notes as God called her to.

Then she cleaned out a closet full of trinkets to find small gifts to put with the notes. She retrieved her painting supplies too.

Many paintings that she’d painted over the years hung about her house or stood in a closet. I can give some of these as gifts Mrs. Chapman thought.

Laura drove Mrs. Chapman to the store to get some small canvas. The sign on the store said:Sale on small canvas so, she got a deal.

When Laura and Mrs. Chapman arrived back at Mrs. Chapman’s house, they packaged some of the paintings from the closet. Each painting got wrapped inside a box with a heart sticker on a piece of paper with a bible verse and an encouraging note.

The next day, Laura delivered the boxes in the church mailboxes and Mrs. Chapman took some to the neighbors. They didn’t write who the gifts were from.

One of the neighbors found a box on their doorstep and jumped excitedly. She opened the box inside and recognized the artwork on the painting and the heart sticker. So very thoughtful she thought.

Moral: Love others as God loves you.

What many didn’t know was that Santa Claus was what they called a ‘Thousand Year Elf’, which meant in his last century or two he began to look as tattered and torn as his white fur-lined coat. His bones had become brittle, maybe from carrying all that fat for so many years and his appetite had diminished to null, I mean just how many dry cookies and glasses of half-spoiled milk can one being eat and drink. Not to mention the insulin he had to pump himself full with that high sugar intake. The last fifty years of his monotonous life, he had become only a thin slice of what he had once been. He had even given up on his beard and shaved it to the last whisker. His magical reindeer had ended up in the larder centuries ago and and robotic replacements had pulled his sleigh for over two centuries. Though they were then ready for the junkyard, too. The children’s children’s children of his original Elves had rebelled and had been living and populating a slowly sinking tropical island for a hundred years. And worst of all, Mrs. Claus had long ago gone mad and had disappeared along with the last of the ice of the North Pole. Then it happened, the year without gifts, Santa Claus right before climbing on his sleigh filled with the computer made toys felt a tug in his chest, not one of joy and jolliness, but one of severe pain that brought his whole life to an end. It became known as: The Claus Collapse. The Santa Stocks went into free fall when the markets open again two days later.

The weathermen had no one to track that year. Some were smart and programmed their computers to show a phantom blip so that the children would not have to be disappointed. Those poor parents, they had to eat those dry cookies themselves as they poured the milk down their throats and wiped their lactic mustaches away. Quickly they ordered gifts and paid the extra fee for one hour delivery from that behemoth of a company, I think you know the one I mean, it starts with an “A” and stole its name from long ago warrioresses or a forest now no longer there which had covered half of a southern continent. Yes, that one.

So, you see our company has come up with a brilliant idea! It has two parts brilliantly fashioned. One is an APP to be held in your hand, the other can be delivered in less than 24 hours and assembles itself. It is the HCPDS. You might ask what that means? Well, I’ll tell you, it’s the Holiday Cheer Product Distributor Service. It is delivered in a box and with just the touch of a button, it assembles itself to look like an old fashioned fireplace (you can choose from ten styles!) and the stockings hanging there can be programmed by the APP to have the names of the family. No real fire is produced, too much of a carbon footprint for our hazy CO2d skies, but a virtual fire can be remotely controlled with over 20 settings: glowing embers to BONFIRE! What a delight this will be for families and their kids! And best of all within the APP, you have a wide variety of “In APP purchases”, and the most important is the ability to order gifts all wrapped in the way you want that are manufactured from recycled house waste. Anything can be produced for the wishes of the young ones!

And one last thing before you make your orders, the cookies and milk left out can be programmed as a VR-illusion. No need to drink and eat them yourselves. So, here you are. He swiped his hand across his tablet and appearing on all theirs was an order form to sign with a press of their fingers.

It was a smash.

Everything went well for the first year or two, until they found out that people found their dogs and cats sometimes missing. Many noticed the fur on the teddy bears or the hair on the dolls had a strong resemblance to the color of those pets. So back to the drawing board they went for version 1.2. We’re excited to see the updates and advancements.

I’m Santa’s granddaughter. And I’m a little bit lost.

My name is Alyssa Claus. I was born in 2004. In case you haven’t figured it out already, everyone in our family lives as long as they want and can age however they please. There’s a lot of people, but I grew up that way, and I’ve gotten used to it.

My mom is American— and Santa is her dad. My own father is from California, but he left ages ago and I’ve never met him. I don’t know, Mom doesn’t like to talk about it. But she’s lived here ever since they met, and she fell in love with the country; so I was raised in the United States.

Like any other American teenager, I’ve been through it all; cell phones, high school, Instagram, (and yes, even crushing on boys) you name it. But I’m not completely normal. Ever December 1st, I take my laptop, my credit card, and my schoolwork and stuff it all in a duffel bag, and in the dead of night on Dec 1 a magic sleigh suddenly pulls up on our front lawn.

“Grandpap’s here!” My mom calls from the kitchen.

That’s when things start to change for me. The entire month of December, we’re expected to live at the North Pole with all of our other relatives and help the elves prepare. That was compromise when Mom left. True, It’s a little awkward, telling Pippy, the head elf, I need to take a break from icing gingerbread houses to finish my physics paper. And yet somehow, we make it work. We leave December 26th for the states, and we reappear as usual, and no one has to know. We tell them we go to the Caribbean, which I find kind of ironic considering the temperature difference.

But now things are changing. Mom says I’m growing up; Grandpap says so too. With our family, what we do with our future is almost always the same: we choose to live at the North Pole and help out in the workshop, living out the eternity under Christmas magic and making toys for children all over the world.

But like I said, I’m not normal. I want to go college. I want to stay in America. Mom says she isn’t sure if she’s okay with it; I know Grandpap definitely isn’t. I’ve tried talking to some of the other elves, particularly one of my best friends, Julie, but even she doesn’t have any suggestions. I’ve also been (trying) to get a boyfriend— we’re not really official yet, but he wants to spend Christmas with me. Julie seems excited to meet him... which did make me smile. But I haven’t brought up the issue with Mom yet. We’ll see how that one goes.

For now, it’s the night of December 1st, and it’s my junior year of high school. My laptop under my arm, my Starbucks peppermint hot cocoa in my hand. Now is really the time to tell Grandpap I want to study and raise a family someday here, where I see my future home... but as the magic sleigh appears in the night sky, and his eyes sparkle with wonder as he yells “HO HO HO!” and stares directly at me and Mom... I’m not sure if I can do it.

The golden sleigh skids onto our grass. The reindeer begin nibbling away at the carrots Mom starts handing them.

The jolly old man looks at my face, and his eyebrows knit with concern. Darn it, he can always tell when something’s wrong.

I take a deep breath. “Grandpap,” I say, “We need to talk.”

She primed the club. Zoom. She was upon him before he could react. Whack. Whack. Whack. He is not moving. She rummages the property for valuables and puts them into her sack. Silverware, trinkets, jewellery. She leaves. There is artificial snow being pumped out of tubes to simulate snow. She raises her gloved hand holding a list of names and addresses written on a piece of paper. She crosses the next uncrossed name from the list.

Her name is Robyn. She is a bandit. She is crossing off names of people on her naughty list. She kills them and takes their valuable belongings. She then packs them in care packages and throws them down to The Lower level below. She recalls a memorable time as a kid and how she loved December. This was her way of bringing both her love of plunder and the warmth of giving in one fun and fulfilling evening. She trod onto the artificial snow and her footprints lead to the darkness of the night.

I’m not really sure how us bunnies got into the gift gig, but it started centuries ago. I am sure you think that guy Santa Claus is still in the business but actually he got out a long time ago. Mrs. Claus got sick of the whole toys for tots stuff and the endless ho-ho-ho and jolly all the time shtick and talked Santa into selling out to the Elf Conglomerate. They bought a place in Costa Rica and went totally native.

The elves really tried to keep it all going, but the reindeers went on strike and they almost took the whole Christmas joy thing down when some of the elves decided they hated the Christmas Eve craziness and tried to convince the rest of the guys to move Christmas to June so it would be warmer for the sleigh run. That was a total disaster and everything was in turmoil.

That’s when Eric, the CEO of the Elf Conglomerate, came and had a long talk with my whole-bunches-of-great Grandad and asked him if we Easter Bunnies would consider taking over the gift distribution department. Eric knew we had a lot of experience in the field by now and always got the eggs and candy baskets taken care of efficiently and quietly so the children still believed bunnies actually leave eggs and stuff.

The contract we agreed on was that the Elf Conglomerate would still make the toys since we had zero expertise in dolls and trains and stuff, and we bunnies would do the sleigh run on December 24 but still keep our Easter job up and running too. It has been crazy busy for a long time now, but the great thing is that the kiddies still believe Santa Claus makes a visit, and of course we still get credit for the Easter baskets.

All in all it has worked out really well. I actually have a meeting with the Tooth Fairy next week. She had gone to visit the Clauses in Costa Rica and is contemplating retirement (she’s getting a bit “long in the tooth” for her job, funny funny) and since we always have a huge bunch of bunnies born all the time we figured we could handle her work, too. We’ve got this kiddie thing in the bag. Eat your heart out, Bezos.

Kylian took his turn to speak into the burning orange embers of the camp fire.

‘2020 had turned out to be an utterly bizarre year. The U.S government got so desperate for a distraction they came out saying there were ‘other worldly craft’ on earth.

Then early in 2021 there was the resolution of the Epstein case that involved trafficking people into elite sex cults. It was some guy who killed himself in prison with no evidence, as the cameras watching his cell had conveniently broken.

Well it turns out that after following the trail, implicating some banks and some very, very powerful people, the whole trafficking ring was traced back to Father Christmas.’

‘Father Christmas?’ One of them said with a questioning look in his face.

Before pausing in thoughtfulness followed by his realisation.

‘Right yeah I remember something about that.’

Kylian continued

‘So we found out he was real too. And not a good guy. He’d been stealing people, and selling them to Epstein and to organ traffickers.

Mrs Christmas was hiding in New Zealand to get out of the spotlight and went to jail for like 180 years, but Father Christmas ended it for himself, the reindeer and all the non-seasonal elves who lived with him in Lapland.

it was Familiecied minus Mrs Christmas who was out of the country. He broadcasted a live video of it, saying “they will never take MY things”.’

Kylian bared his teeth and widened his eyes, eerily reflecting the orange glow of the camp fire.

———————————————————

‘So it turns out that if there is a death in disgrace of a Saint Nicolas, the world must go two centuries without one.

When that happens he is replaced for this time by an ancient Demon named Mara, from Buddhist mythology. She comes from the realm of desire and is said to have had five daughters.

In the darkest part of the night on Christmas Eve, she would sweep from North to South covering the entire line of the globe.

She would appear as an apparition. Every apparition gave birth to five more which in turn gave birth to five more depending on your vantage point. Fractally expanding simultaneously in all directions, hence her being said to have five daughters.

These apparitions would appear in every home, soaking up the desires of all who lived there. And while it sounds spooky, the first Christmas Mara delivered presents was a happy affair. It was particularly good for the children.’

‘Why?’

They all looked on intently, taking in his recollection of events.

‘Because children still had relatively simple desires she’d appear to them as people they desired to see and their presents would be things they just wanted. It could be a toy truck, a pacifier or a bar of soap.

She would even appear to some orphans as a lost parent and stay a moment to comfort them.

But things could get awkward in your teen years and god help you if you still saw her once or twice in your adult years. By which time your personality had become twisted and warped enough to contain some very uncomfortable cravings.’

———————————————————

‘When I was around 16, me and my friends would wait up for her, having parties so that we could see where she’d take us, and what she’d bring.

I called my teenage version of Mara, Mary FAPins because she would come dressed just like a hot model version of Mary Poppins without a shirt on. She had that magic bag where you could take things of any size out continuously forever which was cool to see. She would always bring me new computer games.’

One of the group’s elder members finally interjected, speaking of his own experiences with the Christmas apparition.

‘Well, doesn’t that sound nice! My memorable night one Christmas Eve started when my wife jumped on me, and things had previously been quiet let’s say, or not going so well. I can only assume she had seen someone else during Mara’s visit.

She’d opened her present right away. It was lingerie. She straddled me with that ravenous desire Mara can cause if she shows you the right thing. She started tearing my shirt off. It was my favourite shirt.

Afterwards she dangled her panties over my face and dropped them, still drunk with supernatural desire. There was a name embroidered into the crotch. The name of my brother.’

Kylian replied.

‘Well I’m sorry to hear that, I really am. But I also hear worse things can happen if you try to suppress this raging desire.

It’s common knowledge now that If you tried to dampen your reaction the shape shifters could morph into your greatest fear, becoming a bursting sack of spiders, a demented clown, or a grammar phone, playing that screech you hear when someone scratches their nails across a chalkboard.’

It was true, for grown ups anything could happen. With a horrific tilt in favour of bad things.

Kylian looked at his poor, presumably cuckolded associate who didn’t seem happy with experiencing that scene, as opposed his wife terrified out if her wits.

He smugly relished the satisfaction of imaginary justice served in an alternate turn of events.

Kylian continued

‘There were after all those those new or rare couples to whom the shape shifter showed herself as their current partner or spouse. For the pure of heart with clean desires Christmas Eve was a night of untold happiness materially and in their relationships.

For children it was generally the happiest time of year and Mara was much preferred to Father Christmas.

That delightful mixture of innocent happiness, excitement and the fear of any unknown havoc she might bring.’

He paused and looked at all the faces sitting around the camp fire

‘Merry Christmas to you All’