Santa's Christmas Eve Blues: A Short Story Read online

  Santa’s Christmas Eve Blues

  by

  Douglas Lindsay

  Published by Blasted Heath, 2012

  copyright © 2012 Douglas Lindsay

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the author.

  Douglas Lindsay has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Blasted Heath

  Formatting by Jason G. Anderson

  Visit Douglas Lindsay at:

  www.blastedheath.com

  Version 2-1-3

  1

  A long time ago at the North Pole, where the weather was always wonderfully snowy and cold, lived Santa Claus. He worked all year round with his team of elves to make toys and games, which he would then distribute amongst all the children of the world in the early hours of Christmas morning. At least, all the children of the world who had been well-behaved for the previous year. One of the tasks of Santa’s elves was to monitor the day-to-day conduct of children everywhere, checking on whether or not they had been naughty or nice. After twelve months of intelligence gathering, the information would be collected into a series of reports, from which Santa would make a list. He would then check the list on at least two further occasions.

  It was a simple life and Santa was content. The population of the world was small, and the expectations of the children were low. A doll or a small wooden toy, that was all they’d get in their stocking, and that was all they ever wanted.

  But, as I said at the start of the story, that was a long time ago…

  Santa no longer runs a small operation out of the North Pole. He is now the powerless figurehead of an enormous global enterprise, The Big Fat Father Christmas Corporation, a division of a huge and faceless international conglomerate, whose headquarters take up every single floor of a 97 storey skyscraper in Manhattan. The elves have long since been replaced by a highly structured administrative chain of command, from the Board of Directors at the top, down through several levels of grey-suited middle and junior management.

  It’s not even wonderfully snowy and cold at the North Pole any longer. Scientists predict that within ten years the polar bears will be extinct, Greenland will actually have become green, and the ice sheets will have been replaced by coral reefs and barmen named Raoul mixing margaritas.

  Worst of all for Santa, there are now over two and a half billion children in the world, and that’s an awful lot of children whose behaviour has to be monitored every minute of every day for an entire year. The elves did their best in the past but eventually their operation was put out to tender and they were replaced by a giant, multinational security contractor who had invested heavily in computers and spy satellites. Christmas is big business and can no longer be left in the hands of little people in green outfits.

  And what of Santa, now that the nature of Christmas has so evolved? His work has been completely taken over by a string of faceless executives, so that Santa has been reduced to little more than a messenger. Whereas before he worked all year round, making judgement calls on which children deserved presents and individually selecting gifts for each child, these days he is nothing but the delivery boy on Christmas morning, a task he combines with making the occasional guest appearance at various department stores in the weeks leading up to the big day.

  And so, over the years, Santa has gradually become more and more fed up and tired, which was how, one year very recently, Christmas itself nearly didn’t happen.

  2

  December 24th that year was a snowy day in New York, which was exactly the kind of day that Santa used to love in the North Pole. Now, however, he was grumpy and old, and the snow just played havoc with his sciatica and made him want to snuggle down with a cup of hot chocolate and watch television.

  Just before eleven pm, when he should have been getting ready for his busiest night of the year, Santa was sitting in a comfy chair, his feet on a small coffee table, still dressed in his vest and long johns and staring out at the cold, cold night, as the snow fell over New York. In his hands was a guitar, and as he sat he strummed a tune full of sorrow and melancholy.

  There was a knock at the door, and although Santa did not invite his late evening visitor to enter, the door opened and a young man wearing this year’s spectacles and smelling of Pirates Of The Caribbean for Men confidently walked into the room.

  Santa did not look round. His visitor, Executive Vice-President In Charge of Deliveries, Jeff D. Sheldrake, stopped and stared. Sheldrake was non-plussed. Sure, he knew how to work a room, and he knew how to sell sand to the Bedouin and ice to the Inuit, but he did not have the necessary skill set which would allow him to deal with a Christmas legend sitting in his underwear playing the guitar.

  ‘Santa?’ he said cautiously.

  Santa did not reply. Despite the rather grand title, Santa knew that Sheldrake was a very small fish in the exceptionally large pond of The Big Fat Father Christmas Corporation. Others would follow and Santa did not feel like wasting words, just yet.

  ‘Why, this is extraordinary,’ said Sheldrake nervously, but Santa did not respond. Unsure of what was happening, and with the vague feeling that a cataclysmic event was about to take place and that he, Jeff D. Sheldrake, would be held responsible, Sheldrake turned and hurried from the room, leaving Santa alone with his guitar and the beautiful white snow falling outside his window.

  #

  Sheldrake stood waiting anxiously for the elevator, even though he only had to go down to the floor below. Executive Vice-Presidents never took the stairs.

  Just below Santa’s penthouse apartment, the President of the Board, Henry F. Potter, had an office that took up exactly half of the 96th floor. Some said that Potter wanted an office of this size so that he could play golf at lunchtime without needing to drive to his country club in the Hamptons.

  In the much smaller office outside, his personal assistant, Miss Kubelik, was not impressed that a junior executive wished to see Potter at this time on Christmas Eve.

  ‘I must impress upon you the urgency of this matter, Miss Kubelik,’ said Sheldrake.

  ‘But it’s Christmas Eve,’ said Miss Kubelik. ‘I’ve just passed around the coffee and the pumpkin pie.’

  ‘The very future of Christmas hangs in the balance,’ said Sheldrake, his voice starting to break. (Sheldrake knew how to play an audience.)

  Miss Kubelik looked like she desperately didn’t want to be impressed, but she couldn’t help it. Sheldrake had drawn her in, and suddenly she realised that she herself had a part to play in what was clearly a tense and fascinating drama, which might one day be made into a film for television.

  ‘I think he may have a forty-five second window in five minutes,’ she said, while still trying to imply disinterest.

  Sheldrake paced up an down outside Potter’s office, until Miss Kubelik finally took sympathy on him and showed him through. It took him almost another minute to walk from the door to Potter’s desk.

  ‘What appears to be the trouble?’ said Henry F. Potter cheerily, without looking up from a spreadsheet showing that month’s sales figures. (December is always the best month for Santa Claus merchandising and promotional tie-ins.)

  ‘It’s Santa, Sir,’ said Sheldrake. ‘I get the feeling he’s not focused on the night ahead. I get the feeling that he might not be going out on his sleigh.’

  For a moment Sheldrake wondered if Potter had even he
ard him, then slowly Potter raised his head and looked at Sheldrake with amused curiosity. He wasn’t yet sure, but these figures were encouraging and he was beginning to think that this December might well turn out to be the best December ever.

  ‘Not focused? But this is his biggest night of the year. His only night of the year. If Santa refused to go out on Christmas Eve, why it would be like coffee deciding not to taste like coffee any more. It’d be like green eggs and ham, or a coral reef at the North Pole. What seems to be the problem?’

  ‘Well, Sir,’ said Sheldrake nervously, ‘he appears to be singing the blues.’

  Henry F. Potter raised a dubious eyebrow as the smile disappeared from his face, and then he slowly lifted his enormous frame out of the chair.

  3

  A few minutes later Potter stood before Santa Claus, his eyebrow still dubiously raised. Usually at this time on Christmas Eve, Santa would have been all spruced up in his best red and white suit, he would’ve been standing in front of the mirror checking that his beard was snowy-white, or he would have been ensuring that his reindeer were all preened and ready to fly off into the magical night air from their rooftop location. But Santa was still as Sheldrake had described him, in his underwear, feet on the table, strumming his guitar.

  Potter watched him for a few moments, not entirely sure how to proceed. He was glad he had not brought Sheldrake with him, as he did not want a subordinate to see him in such a state of confusion.

  ‘Mr. Claus?’ said Potter, eventually stepping forward.

  Santa did not turn. He looked out at the snow falling softly over 5th Avenue, and raised his own dubious eyebrow.

  ‘What appears to be the trouble?’ asked Potter.

  Finally Santa turned slowly round and looked at the President of the Board. And then, to Potter’s consternation, Santa began to sing:

  ‘It’s a frosty night.

  all snowy and cold.

  I’m all out of Prozac,

  I feel tired and old.

  I ain’t puttin’ on that outfit,

  ain’t goin’ out on that sleigh,

  I hate all those horrible, miserable

  children anyway.

  They give me the blues,

  I’ve got the blues,

  I’ve got the blues,

  I’ve got the Christmas Eve blues.’

  Henry F Potter stood listening to the song in stupefied silence. He had never heard of such a thing. Santa not wanting to go out on Christmas Eve was like Little Jack Frost refusing to put the bite on your toes.

  ‘Why, this is extraordinary,’ said Potter when Santa had finished singing, but Santa did not respond. Instead he continued to strum his guitar, playing a tune full of sorrow and melancholy.

  4

  Half an hour later Henry F Potter was presiding over a full board meeting of The Big Fat Father Christmas Corporation. Many of the executives had been indifferent about being summonsed to work at this late hour on Christmas Eve, but Potter had made sure that Miss Kublik had impressed upon each of them the extreme urgency of the matter.

  ‘We must find a way to get him to deliver the presents!’ cried Potter, slamming his fist onto the table. The smile of affable curiosity from earlier had completely vanished. Once again Potter was the hard-nosed businessman who had once managed to sell rainwater to Scotland. ‘Christmas has to happen or shares in this company will collapse overnight. It’ll make Jurassic Park look like a teddy bear’s picnic in a Girl Scout factory.’

  Even though Potter could be a little strange sometimes, and many of the things he said did not actually make any sense, everyone still knew what he meant.

  ‘Why don’t we get someone else to do it?’ chirped a small round woman from the far end of the table.

  There was a sudden hushed silence round the table, and everyone looked at the small round woman who had dared to speak. Potter did not like it when someone other than him spoke at a board meeting, and a couple of senior executives glanced at him nervously, waiting for the eruption.

  ‘Because,’ began Potter slowly, keeping his temper in check, ‘Santa has to deliver sixteen billion presents to approximately one billion homes in a very short period of time. Do you know how he does that?’

  ‘No,’ said the small round woman, timidly shaking her head.

  ‘Well,’ said Potter imperiously, ‘neither do I. Nobody does. It’s magic, Santa’s special magic, and he’s the only one who can do it. Of course, we have scientists working on the technology, but they’re decades away from a breakthrough. Decades. We need answers, people, or this company is going to sink faster than the Titanic in a bowl of custard. We’re in permanent danger of losing the Christmas franchise to Disney, or the Chinese even, and this will be the catalyst to tip us over the edge. Now, I know there’s usually little point in any of you speaking when I’m in the room, but it’s time to throw the pigskin into the bushes and set fire to the envelope. We need ideas and we need them in the next ten seconds.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said a strange little man with dimples on his nose, ‘we could ask Mrs. Claus to have a word with him.’

  Potter sat back, his hands clasped on his big, fat belly, a belly engorged on mince pies, pumpkin doughnuts and mulled wine, as he regarded the strange little man with dimples on his nose for some time.

  ‘Mrs. Claus,’ he said eventually. ‘Might work. Might work.’

  The strange little man relaxed and sat back, hoping that his idea might be the one that helped save Christmas.

  So it was that shortly afterwards, Mrs. Claus was flown by helicopter to Manhattan from her retirement home in Saratoga.

  5

  A short while later, with time running out and Christmas in danger of not taking place at all, Verity Claus walked into the sitting room of her husband’s penthouse apartment, to find him in exactly the same position he’d been in for his earlier visitors.

  The snow was continuing to fall outside – something that had made for a nervous helicopter ride – and there was an empty mug of hot chocolate sitting on the table beside Santa, with chocolaty lip marks on the rim from where he had taken his last slurp.

  ‘Why,’ said Mrs. Claus, ‘this is extraordinary. You can’t sit about like a raggedy rascal.’

  Henry F Potter had once remarked that he found talking to Mrs. Claus to be like having a conversation with Grace Kelly in a Miss Piggy costume, although it was never absolutely clear from that sentence which one of them was dressed as the Muppet.

  Santa gave his wife a quick glance, then looked back out at the falling snow. He had long since thought that his marriage was old enough and long enough that he and his wife could understand each other perfectly without ever needing to talk. This was not an opinion that Mrs. Claus ever seemed to have shared.

  ‘What about the children?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you realise what you’re doing?’

  And then, much to Mrs. Claus’s consternation, for she had long since tired of her husband’s frequent penchant for bursting into song, Santa started to sing.

  ‘Don’t know ‘bout you,

  but I could care more.

  They ain’t gettin’ any presents,

  that’s what they’ve got in store.

  It’ll teach them a lesson,

  in avarice and greed.

  A year without an X-Box

  is exactly what they need.

  It’ll give them the blues,

  yeah, they’re getting the blues.

  They’ll get the blues,

  they’ll get the Christmas Eve blues.’

  ‘Oh, I hate it when he does that,’ mumbled Mrs. Claus. Then, realising that she would get nothing further from her husband, she walked quickly from the room, away to collect the share options she’d been promised in return for trying to get Santa to change his mind, unaware that within hours the share options wouldn’t be worth the candy cane they were written on.

  Santa watched the door close, then looked back out at the wintry sky and once more started to strum quie
tly on his guitar, his heart full of sorrow and melancholy. He thought about the old days, and the good times he had had with the elves. And he wondered where they all were now, because it had been years and years since he had seen any of them.

  But thinking about the elves just made him feel even sadder than he had previously, and so he forced himself to not think about his dear old friends, and instead decided that he had time for one more cup of hot chocolate before bedtime.

  6

  ‘Clearly,’ said Henry F. Potter, at the next emergency meeting of the executive board of The Big Fat Father Christmas Corporation, ‘the Mrs. Claus Strategy failed to work. It was foolish to have thought it might. Time is short, ladies and gentlemen. We need ideas or by this time tomorrow we’ll all be scraping pig’s trotters from the bottom of the barrel.’

  There was almost silence around the room, the only sound the gentle plop of sweat falling to the table from worried brows. The Board were beginning to panic.

  ‘Got it!’ said a curiously small man with an exceptionally large moustache, sitting dangerously close to Potter to be expressing such enthusiasm. ‘We should ask Mr. Gruber to go and see him. That’d do the trick.’

  There was an audible gasp around the room, like the sound of pixies bursting from eating too many doughnuts. Hans Gruber was the Ultimate Supremo Dictator For Life of The Big Fat Father Christmas Corporation, and no one, not even Henry F. Potter, dared disturb him out of office hours. Not even in an emergency, not even on Christmas Eve.

  This, however, was an emergency like no other. This, thought Henry F. Potter, made the Cuban missile crisis look like a strawberry shortage in a raspberry jam factory.

  Potter stared at the curiously small man with the exceptionally large moustache and began to think that perhaps he was right. There really was no other option. He was going to have to get Mr. Gruber out of bed.