NORTH POLE RESIDENTS HOT UNDER COLLAR

Holiday stress takes its toll

(Prince of Whales Island) It couldn’t have come at a more difficult time. Christmas was in the air, deadlines were nailed on the wall. The holiday crunch was breathing down the necks of elves and reindeer, of Santa himself. That’s probably what did it.

It all started when Red Sayles advertised reindeer on the menu over at the Arctic Cafe. He bragged about fried reindeer, reindeer stew, even escalloped reindeer. It was supposed to be a joke, to lighten things up prior to the Thanksgiving madness but it backfired. Lines of reindeer picketed Red’s place, not only disrupting his lucrative trade but causing a void in the local work force over at the sleigh barn.

The word is that Red won’t take down the signs and the herds continue to protest his political insensitivities. He hasn’t sold but a few of the featured items either.
Of course, if the Yuletide muscle teams don’t have enough to worry about, their self-imposed leader, Rudolph, is victim to reoccurring ego trips. He has apparently attempted to get his fellow reindeer to pledge allegiance to King Rudolf. He has fashioned a system of whistles and mirrors so as to better show off his nose, and he insists on landing first on each and every roof, so as to be the primary subject of every child’s sleigh viewing.

“It’s bad enough we have to haul the fat boy around all night,” said Prancer, a soft-spoken reindeer, of unidentified gender. “Then we have to listen to Rudolph giving orders. It’s enough to make me go back to work in the tundra fields.”
The reindeer aren’t the only ones upset with the size of Santa.

“Hey, it’s not like we pay first class for sleigh rides,” said Groppo, an elf of low degree, “nor is it a matter of spending the night delivering presents with the old fart. It’s just that he takes up so much room once aboard. There’s no room for presents so we have to follow the main sleigh around with smaller orbiting sleighs. Besides, we spend a lot of time testing his sleigh for safety. It operates great when he’s not bogging things down.”

Many elves insist that Santa doesn’t listen to them.

“Just because we like body piercing and smoke cigarettes (94% of elves smoke at least four packs of cigarettes per day) he turns his back on us. We settled with the tobacco companies. Santa (himself an elf, though a non-smoking one) got his piece of the pie,” continued Groppo.

“You’ve no doubt noticed how television portrays the average American male as an overweight, stupid, football mad, infantile, suburban sheep? Santa passes us off to other cultures in much the same way only he paints us with tobacco juice on our chins, rings in our noses, and a pint in our back pockets. It’s not so, not these days anyway. He thinks he’s the big kahuna, the don, the Norse king. Well, he ain’t. nothin’ but an elf who was in the right place at the right time.”

Other elves say the wedge with Santa has to do with poor test scores.

“Sure our test scores are down from a few years ago but most of us have to keep a second job to survive. I deliver pizzas. My kids work at the car wash. My brother takes tourists for snowmobile rides,” said Rasputin, a skinny elf with a dark beard and beady eyes.

“Most of us can’t even afford a ski pass even though the ski areas are located on public lands,” added a third elf, named Elsie. “We used to sneak on to the lifts disguised as kids but deeper voices and facial hair give us away these days. Even us girls.” – Kashmir Horseshoe