Waiting For Christmas Morning

She looked at the chaos surrounding her and wanted to scream. An entire year to plan and for some reason, come December twenty-third everyone in the village seemed to go insane and appeared to forget what they were supposed to do.

Walking into the toy room off the workshop she let out a shriek. “What is going on in here?” There were toys and bags everywhere. “You’re putting the wrong toys into the wrong sacks. And you’re running out of time, this should have been done last week. Where’s the list?” She held out her hand and turned to the head elf. “You should know better, you’ve done this for hundreds of years. Why are these names underlined on here?” she added as she flipped the pages of the official naughty and nice list.

“Well, Mrs. Claus, it appears we’ve had a few of the naughtier ones redeem themselves in the past few weeks, they’ve done a good deed or two. Some shoveled their neighbors snow, three of them donated their allowance to charity, six have started doing their chores, and a handful even went to help their parents at the local food banks. The rest of the underlined ones have all done something just as kind or thoughtful, some without provocation. So now we have to move them to the nice list and that means more toys and sacks. And less coal. It’s getting hard to keep track of.”

She shook her head, “Go get the members of the elfin choir. They can put the toys in the correct sacks as you direct them. And keep track of all the changes; we’ll need to update the database once all this is over with,” she added, wondering how they ever managed before they had the network up and running.

Which reminded her, she knew she probably should get the laptop charged, she’d bet her best shortbread that Santa hadn’t checked it; he had been busy working with the reindeer team and sorting out the last minute flight details. Then they’d have a mess like last year when he didn’t take the spare battery and had to call from Joey Marshall’s to check on the weather over the Atlantic and between them figure out the best flight plan.

Mrs. Claus couldn’t help but smile; if Joey only knew who had been using the phone at his house that night. She hoped his parents didn’t mind the long distance bill, but they were getting a little something extra this year to make up for it.

Satisfied that the toy issue was now being taken care of she headed into the cookie-hut to check on the gingerbread makers. As she shut the door she gasped at the tall dark buildings on the table before her.

“What are those?”

“Gingerbread condos. And this one,” the cookie-master pointed, “is a loft”.

“A loft? Are you kidding me? What happened to the cottages? You know, gingerbread house, candy and icing and gumdrops. Lollipop trees and marshmallow snowmen?”

“We wanted to try something different, we got the idea from that real estate show they have in New York.”

Mrs. Claus rolled her eyes and took a deep breath wondering what other crazy concoction her suddenly creative gingerbread team was going to come up with. “I’m going to go to the kitchen and then to check on Santa. Make some cottages.”

Maybe a nice, strong eggnog would help, she thought. Opening the door to the kitchen feeling somewhat calmed by the thought of the smooth drink she stopped, her jaw dropping in shock.

“What. Are. You. Doing.” She asked, each word its own sentence.

“Eating.”

“A chili dog? In your suit? You’re going to make a mess of it. Get that thing off right now and give it to me. I don’t have time to wash and press it again before tomorrow night.”

“But I only get to wear it once a year; I wanted an extra day. Besides, I had to make sure it wasn’t too big. Just in case I need an extra chili dog. Or two.”

Mrs. Claus sat down at the table and held her head in her hands. “Everyone here is nuts. You included. The toys are getting mixed up, kids keep jumping back and forth from list to list, the reindeer were making snow angels earlier for crying out loud, the bakers are making condos and lofts and who knows what else, and now you’re eating chili in your best suit?”

Ah yes, she couldn’t wait for Christmas morning. They had first class tickets to Hawaii.