The Great (Environmentally Conscious) Elf Rescue!

A couple nights ago, while getting my daughter ready for bed, she asked me to make up a story for her.

It’s been a long time since I made up a story on the spot, but seeing as I was in a Christmas kind of mood, I gave it a shot.  I’m sorry you can’t experience the original, illustrated as it was with a nifty glowing pictures thanks to a glow-in-the-dark light-writing board.  But you should still get the gist of it, complete with the requisite pseudo-leftist pro-environmental cautionary propaganda.

Santa Claus and the North Pole

Have you ever wondered why Santa lives at the North Pole?

He didn’t always, you know.  Years ago, before he was Santa, when he was young Nicolas, he lived on a tropical island, where he sat in the sun and drank lemonade.

This doesn’t mean Nick was a lazy young man.  No, he worked hard, building himself a tree house out of palm trees and coconuts, and in his spare time, he liked carving animals out of little pieces of driftwood.  His favorite animal to carve was a wooden duck.

He lived his tropical life for many years, until one day, when he was sitting in his usual spot on the beach, he felt water touching his toes.  He looked toward the ocean, and saw that the water was much higher today than it had ever been before.

How odd, he thought.  And he moved a little further up the beach.  An hour later, the waves were touching his toes again,

The ocean water was MUCH higher now.  Nick decided he’d had enough sitting on the beach and went back to his tree house.  He ate a coconut dinner and went to bed.

In the morning, he couldn’t get out of his tree house.  The ocean had flooded the whole island, and only the trees were still above the waves.  And the ocean was steadily getting higher!

He climbed to the top of the tree house and looked out at the island that was now gone under the ocean waves.

His island was sinking!

Nick called for help, knowing it was no use, knowing he was the only person on his island, but not knowing what else to do.  Suddenly, his cries were drowned out by the sound of a helicopter.  It was painted red and white and circled above his tree.  A rope ladder dropped down and Nick climbed up.  Inside the helicopter, was he met by two people, both with long gray beards and pointy ears, but both no bigger than a five-year-old child.

“I’m Clarence,” said Clarence.  “And this is Moe.  You’re lucky we were nearby.”  The only way Nick could tell the difference between the two elves was by their hats.  Clarence had a red and green hat, while Moe had a green and red hat.  Nick admitted to himself that was a poor way to tell them apart, but then Moe gave him a glass of lemonade, and he relaxed a little.

As the helicopter sped over the ocean, Nick asked the elves what was going on.

“The oceans are rising,” Clarence explained.  “It’s the children.  Right around this time of year, every year, all the children in the world get so sad, and they start crying, and their tears run into the rivers, which run into the oceans, and the oceans keep getting higher.  Your island was the lowest island we could find, which is lucky for you, because we were keeping an eye on it to see when it would finally flood.”

“If we can’t get the children to stop crying,” added Moe, “soon, the oceans will flood everything!”

That didn’t sound good to Nick.

“Where are we going?” Nick asked.

“We have to find someplace that won’t flood,” said Clarence.

“And figure out how to stop the children from crying,” added Moe.

“Hmm…” said Nick. 

They say that some people are born with great ideas, and that some people have an idea that becomes great.  And some people find themselves flying in a helicopter with elves while drinking lemonade and suddenly realize, Hey!  Ice floats!

“Take me to the North Pole!” Nick shouted.

At the North Pole, Nick sent Clarence off to find as many other elves as he could.  They’d need a lot of help.  And he asked Moe to start building the biggest sleigh ever built.  Meanwhile, Nick started carving ducks, hundreds of thousands of wooden ducks.

With the help of all the elves Clarence could find, they finished enough ducks for every single child in the world, and loaded them onto the sleigh, which was the biggest anyone has ever seen.  Nick checked the wind, checked the weather forecast, thanked the elves for all their help, hopped into the sleigh, and was ready to go!

Only one problem: the sleigh didn’t move.

Nick looked at Clarence.  Clarence looked at Moe.  Moe noticed that his shoelaces were untied.

After tying his shoes, Moe saw what was wrong.  The sleigh was missing reindeer!  So Moe grabbed eight reindeer that were grazing in the woods nearby and hitched them to the sleigh.  Nick snapped the reigns, and the reindeer pulled and pulled, but the sleigh still wouldn’t budge.

So Moe unhitched the eight regular reindeer, and hitched up eight jet-powered, laser-guided high-velocity reindeer in their place.  Nick gave the reigns that slightest wiggle, and they were airborne!

All through Christmas night they flew, landing on rooftops, dropping wooden toy ducks down chimneys, until Christmas dawn spread over the world.  And because children love wooden toy ducks, all the children in the world stopped crying.  And because all the children suddenly knew that one gift, however small, can mean that someone loves them very much, the oceans receded, and Nick’s island rose out of the ocean again. 

Now, years later, Nick has a beard just like his elves, and the whole world knows him as Santa (which means "Wooden Duck Maker" in elvish), but on a summer evening, when Christmas is still many months away, you might still catch him far from his workshop (which he kept at the North Pole, just in case anyone start crying again), lying on the beach with his glass of lemonade.

And that’s the true story.

Sort of.