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Well, they tried. Little People, Doing Big ThingsBy Rick Horowitz Of all the Christmases there ever were, the strangest Christmas of all was the year the elves went after Santa Claus. This happened a long time ago, back when the North Pole was a little bit farther south than it is today, on a tiny piece of muddy swampland. Santa Claus had a big white house at one end of this swampland, where he lived with Mrs. Claus, and also with Socks the Cat and Buddy the Dog. And Santa's elves -- hundreds and hundreds of them! -- lived in a big house at the other end of this swampland, where they worked day and night turning out Christmas toys for good little girls and boys. Now, there were two kinds of elves living in the elves' house back then -- donkey elves, and elephant elves -- and they didn't get along very well. When there were more donkey elves than elephant elves, the donkey elves made all the rules. (The elephant elves didn't like that at all!) But then things changed, and suddenly there were more elephant elves than donkey elves, so then the elephant elves made all the rules. How do you think the donkey elves felt about that? Santa looked like the donkey elves more than he looked like the elephant elves, though when the light shone on his face a certain way, people said, he looked a little like the elephant elves, too. (The elephant elves didn't think so.) Other people said Santa had a lot of alley cat in him. That was just a saying, though -- it meant Santa liked the ladies. One day, a powerful elephant elf named Newt came dashing into the workshop. He was very excited. "Santa has been running around on Mrs. Claus!" he shouted. "With some sweet young thing called Monica!" All the elves were stunned to hear the news. The donkey elves bit their tongues, but the elephant elves said that Santa would have to pay. Little girls and boys wouldn't stand for a misbehaving Santa, they said. The elephant elves demanded a meeting with Santa right away, and they marched right up to the big white house to see him. "I never ran around on Mrs. Claus!" Santa cried, shaking his finger and looking very angry. (He only meant that there wasn't any "running" involved -- Santa was crafty that way.) But the elephant elves were angry, too, and they kept asking questions. "Then how come this Monica got more presents than all the other children?" they wanted to know. "I have no recollection of anything like that," said Santa, but the elf named Newt just scowled at him. "Then how," he thundered, "do you explain that stain on her roof?" "Stain?" asked Santa. "What stain?" "Reindeer droppings!" cried Newt in triumph. "Santa, you're toast." But Santa wasn't toast! In fact, the angrier the elephant elves got at Santa Claus, the more they screamed and hollered that Santa had to go, the angrier all the little girls and boys got at them! The little girls and boys even told Newt he shouldn't be in charge of the elves anymore. So then another elf named Bob said he'd be in charge, and he let the angriest of the elephant elves draw up a petition to run Santa right out of town. But before Bob could even sit in Newt's big old chair at the front of the workshop, somebody said that Bob had a secret, too: He'd been running around on Mrs. Bob, the very same way Santa had been running around on Mrs. Claus! That was the end of Bob. So then the elephant elves decided on another elf, an elf named Dennis. Nobody outside the workshop had ever heard of Dennis, but they were getting desperate. Christmas was just around the corner, and the elephant elves were dropping like flies. Meanwhile, all the little girls and boys kept saying they loved Santa Claus more than ever, even if he had been naughty, not nice. They didn't want him run out of town, they said. They wanted him to stay right where he was, spreading holiday cheer for everyone. So Santa copped a plea in the Senate, and they all lived happily ever after. The moral of the story: You don't ask elves to do a grownup's job.
Posted
12/22/98. Fresh stuff right here twice
weekly!
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