And now our story begins…
A lot happened in 1986. Some weird things…. Hands Across America, angry cows, Ferris Bueller took a day off. And there were amazing things! Halley’s Comet, the Oprah Winfrey Show was born! “That’s not a knife. This is a knife!” introduced the world to Australia!
Looking back now, 1986 was a very fitting year for the events that almost brought the end of Christmas and maybe the end of all holidays.
“BORED! Bored I tell you. It’s the same thing every year” Santa exclaimed as he paced about the workshop. “The only excitement is Christmas itself.”
“It’s the same thing every year alright.” Mrs. Claus said sternly. “You complain you are bored. Every year! And I tell you every year, get out there. Mix it up. You are not a prisoner here. YOU ARE SANTA CLAUS for goodness sakes! You can go anywhere! Do anything you want. Stop crying about it and doooo something!” If I didn’t say, they had this conversation EVERY year. For hundreds of years. Maybe thousands.
“You can climb a mountain. You can dive to the bottom of the ocean. You can swim with the sharks. Learn the salsa. It would be GREAT if you learned to cook. Run, dance, sing, learn the guitar. Puzzles. Magic. Baseball. Pizza. Fly a kite. Skip. Jump. Jacks. Pickup sticks. Kick the can.” She ended with a very very large sigh. “For goodness sakes, do something. Just please….stop complaining.”.
Santa grumbled and waved his hand. Shooing away the list of great ideas. What did I tell you? Santa can be grumpy, just like you and me.
Fizzle Thistle, Santa’s head elf, was with the Clauses in the workshop. Santa and Fizzle were best friends. They did everything together. The big sleigh ride. Birthdays. Thanksgiving and Easter. And Fizzle felt as bored as Santa.
Fizzle jumped to his feet and shouted “Hey I know, what about Halloween? It’s Halloween next week!”
“What a glorious idea, Fizzle!” Mrs. Claus said clapping her hands.
Fizzle said “we can dress up. Go to a small town. With costumes, no one will recognize us. AND ALL THAT CANDY!!!”. Fizzle was so excited and was hopping up and down.
Santa stopped pacing. He was thinking. A smile slowly grew on his face. “What costume? What costume would I wear? Something fun?” He was starting to get excited now. “A wizard maybe? No. Something funny, a clown. No, something whimsical, a fairy. No wait, something SCARY. A ghost! A ghoul. A vampire! A werewolf!” now Santa was hopping up and down from one foot to the other.
He set to thinking. Thinking harder than he had thought for a hundred years. This required a great many cookies and a great deal of eggnog to fuel his thinking. “Frankenstein!! That’s it!” Santa exclaimed. “He’s big. He’s scary. He’s got those cool bolts sticking out his neck”. “Perfect!” he said clapping his hands. Being a big man himself, Santa thought it was a costume he could pull off. “What a transformation this will be” he thought to himself. Normally a warm, jolly, handsome man delivering presents to all the girls and boys. Now he can be a big scary monster the same little girls and boys will run screaming from. Of course, this will be all in good fun because it is Halloween. Santa would never really want to scare anyone, especially children.
Fizzle jumped with glee at the idea. “I can be Igor. I can be Igor” he said. “I will have a large lump on my back. Oh, and I will drag my leg behind me when we walk up to doors.”
Mrs. Claus listened to the two discuss their plans and was so happy for them. She started to get excited too. “We don’t have much time. I will get to making the costumes. I know just what to do. They will be the best costumes anyone has ever set eyes on” she told the two giddy men.
“NO!” cried Santa. Then in a calmer voice, “No. Thank you dear, but no. I want to go to a store and pick out our costumes. Just like normal children do.” He swept his hands in a wide circle. “We are going to have the FULL experience.”
“Ok. Ok. I get it. Calm down boys. I think that’s a wonderful idea.” said Mrs. Claus. “Now you only have a week to prepare so don’t wait too long on your plans”.
“Where are we going to trick-or-treat?” asked Fizzle. “Are we going to take the sleigh and travel around the world? Think of how much candy we could get. And how fair is that? We give them presents at Christmas and they give us candy on Halloween. How cool is that?”
“Whoa! Whoa! Slow down Fizzle. Like I said, we are going to do this like any regular child would do. We will pick a place and walk door to door.” Santa replied. “Now where to? It must be a small town. Nice people. Not too busy. Not too warm, not too hot. Not too cold, not too freezing.”
They set to thinking. Pacing past each other. Fizzle: “Paris?” Santa: “Too big. Sydney?” Fizzle: “Too far. Seattle?” Santa: “Too wet. Hawaii?” Fizzle: “Too nice”. Back and forth. Back and forth they went. Thinking harder and harder. Then. All of a sudden, they both stopped pacing. Looked at each other and at the exact same time yelled “ALONE!” They hopped from foot to foot. Hopped in a circle. Screamed with glee. “ALONE! ALONE! ALONE!”. And so it was settled. The small town of Alone.
Mrs. Claus shook her head. Watching these two get excited over anything made her smile.
← Previous: The Clauses’ Thanksgiving · Contents · Next: Alone →