Christmas

Santa’s Blues Turn Green

by Jim Shahin
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SANTA: How's the move going? How do you think? Look at all this stuff. [Santa's eyes scan the room, drawing my attention to the landscape of boxes and unpacked toys.] It is amazing what you accumulate. Where does it all come from? I tell Mrs. Claus we have to pare down. But then we start going through the stuff, and everything seems to conjure a memory. So we never throw anything out. We end up moving little wooden stagecoaches that nobody wants anymore and cuckoo clocks, for crying out loud, along with the iPods and the Guitar Hero IIIs. It's just a nightmare.

AW: Moving is always hard.
SANTA:  Yeah? You've had some hard moves? Try moving an entire village. There are all the elves - moving them isn't easy, I don't mind telling you. The coordination involved … man! Plus, you know elves - they work hard, they play hard. But besides moving them, we've had to build entirely new accommodations for them. We decided to go with condos. And then, of course, you have the reindeer. They're like cats. Or dogs. I forget which ones don't like to move. Anyway, they keep coming back to the house. They just keep wanting to play all their reindeer games. It gets to me. I'll be like, 'Donner! Blitzen! You want to come back to the old house? Fine. We could use a little help around here. Start transporting this stuff.' " We've had to build a new toy-assembly plant and a new sleigh-maintenance facility.   It's been hard on Mrs. Claus, but we're going to get through it.  I don't mind tellin you, it's made me a little crabby.

AW: How will the move impact this year's Christmas?

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ISSUE: Oct 1, 2007
American Way Cover - 10/1/2007