One Million Tiny Things

Christmas Clean-up

Dear Minister of Magical creatures,

It's decided, I'm never taking an off-day ever again. Being so old as to have a white beard that touches the ground, having fun seems to have disappeared a few decades ago. But with Miranda, my wife being on my case 24/7 .....

"Santa! You doof, who's going to clean the chimney if you're asleep"

"Oi! Harry Gunther from California stole $10 from his mother's purse. Wake up you old bag! You have to check if people are naughty or nice"

And then suddenly on the 20th of December she says to me,

"Santa, my old friend Carly, you'll know her as the tooth fairy, just went with her new boyfriend to climb Mount Everest. Why do we never do anything fun like that?"

Now, in my opinion, labouring up the tallest mountain on Earth is decidedly not fun. But, Miranda is entitled to her own opinions. Then, due to blasted Carly's vacation, Miranda got it in her head that I needed a vacation.
Me, the one person in this world who only works once every year, needed a vacation.

I really did try to convince her otherwise. I suggested making s'mores and watching the rush in holiday stores. That was always amusing. But, if there's something Miranda has always been, it's determined. Before I knew what was happening, I got cartered off to the Bahamas.

Yes, the Bahamas. The tropical paradise with never ending warm sunlight. For a person who'd lived most of their life up in the North Pole. This was utterly completely horrible. The ice was liquid and you couldn't walk on it, the yellow grains weren't soft like snow and they got everywhere, I couldn't wear my santa suit, instead Miranda introduced me to the dumbest piece of cloth I have ever seen, called a swimsuit and my reindeer were not allowed on the island.

Miranda, on the other hand, had a wonderful time swimming with dolphins, getting taned (whatever that is) and relaxing on the beach.

With Christmas being barely a week away, I had to leave the gift-giving in someone's hands. For my luck, Rudolph knew a reindeer who knew a bird who knew a guy who knew another guy, and after a long chain of command Cupid came to me. He was not busy because people had no time to fall in love with all the shopping and the running.

So, I happily, well as happily as I could be, left to the Bahamas with Miranda, knowing that I was leaving the North Pole with such an experienced individual.

Turns out, Cupid had a rather different way of doing things. He'd demanded on the very first day that all the gifts be blasted to cinders. Of course, Cadeau, my daughter, thought it was a terrible idea. She even hit Cupid on the head with a roll of wrapping paper.

Then he had sent a pinch of love to some kids. It is a mercy I didn't pinch the boy into oblivion after reading the customer reports the parents had sent to Personal relations. They were not happy.

I don't think I have to mention how well his gift substitutes such as love bites, whatever they were, as chocolates and soul mates instead of simple train engines and barbie dolls were recieved by the children and parents.

I am still sorting out the disastrous outcomes of the OTPs or something, no idea what that means, that he created.

One parent just spoke to me a couple days back about her six year old daughter who had been convinced by this nincompoop-uh-boy to marry. And good heavens they've got it done because stupid cupid managed to charm the lady at the wedding registration office. She talked for atleast an hour about how expensive the annulment and law cases are going to be, not mention the countless hours of therapy that will be needed to undo such a traumatic experience. Once she was done the only suitable response I could think of was to ask her to count me in on the therapy sessions.

I could really use those. So could my reindeer. The boys had had to hunt for mistletoe all night, for the Goon-I-left-in-charge's idea of a perfect gift was a true loves kiss, again no idea what that means, I don't think anyone does, it is pure blasphemy at this point.

He had the poor children kissing everything from each other to blasted frogs and toads. I had to spend more than ever on high quality toothpaste, tooth brushes, soap and loofahs just to avoid more complains about oral infections and such. Such a waste though because my complaint machine blew up last night after flashing the overload signal a couple times.

My workshop already looked like a tornado hit it after the whole Cupid Christmas fiasco and yesterday's explosion was just the icing on the cake. The whole thing collapsed on itself like cardboard.

And my elves, oh my poor elves. I am sure I have seen creatures who were less disturbed after the 9-11 blast. Several are in full time therapy while the rest are either in intensive care or have entirely quit their job and fled all the way to the South Pole.

I can't blame them. First they had to watch the dumb kid I put in charge burn their year long creations to dust and then send the kids the lamest gifts ever. But what completely broke them was his complete disregard for children who were naughty or nice. The goon distributed his measly gifts to everyone alike.

And maybe I could have excused it all, worked every day for the next 365 days to fix the damage this nitwit had caused. But he did the most outrageous thing. Cupid himself had the nerve to fall in love. I mean, how dare he! Especially while working.

Cadeau, had been the biggest opposition to his plans.
She stopped him from kidnapping poor prince's and turning them to frogs so they could be magically kissed.
She forbade him from stuffing innocent people into snowglobes to be found by their one true love. For God's sakes, that's illegal.
She tried her best to distract him from stopping snow and instead making it rain love arrows so that everybody fell in love by Christmas.
She and the elves even tried to blast Cupid from a Canon so that he'd end up halfway around the world.

But nothing had seemed to work.

Cupid was dead-set on turning Christmas into a love-fest and nothing would stop him. But, I didn't raise Cadeau to be normal. Oh no, she was exceptionally talented at ruining plans.

So while Cupid put up mistletoe, Cadeau took it down. While he arranged marriages, she showed up with the divorce papers. As Cupid rained love, she brought rain so that everybody would stay at home.
(That was actually the reason for the disastrous weather this time. Not that Grel, the cloud broke up with Fluffy, but I hope you'll excuse it)

But being the god of love, Cupid had always found that a smidge of affection could solve any problem. So while Cadeau rained toy cars on his head and pelted him with snowballs, he smiled at her, talked with her, brought her flowers and was uncharacteristically charming.

And my stupid daughter fell for it, leading all her marvelous plans for Cupid's damnation into destruction.

But of course, the god of love could twist anybody into falling for him. Even emotionless, work-prone Cadeau.

Surprisingly, Cupid seemed to feel the same (all a big scam, if you ask me). He tried very hard to impress her and planned a huge Christmas ensemble with mistletoe hanging from practically everywhere and all the elves ready with a large performance.

Unfortunately, Cupid while being the #1 romantic failed quite pathetically to perform his own romantic showcase. Helgy, one of my elves, stumbled and made all his fellow elves to go down like a set of dominoes. One elf hit a lit torch and all the mistletoe caught fire.

Miranda and I came back home in January with Miranda being completely relaxed and me being utterly itchy from all the sand to find this outrageous pantomime screening in the North Pole.

We saw it go up in flames. Literally.

But, Cadeau found it rather amusing and they've worked things out. I still don't find that smelly brown thing a suitable boyfriend for my daughter but they seem really happy. So, I may let it pass if he promises not to blow up my workshop again.

Minister, as you can see things are still sorting themselves out. I firmly believe that neither I or Cadeau had any part in any of this mayhem. Feel free to punish Cupid as you see fit.

Still fixing Christmas,
Santa.