Santa’s Blues Turn Green By Jim Shahin
HERE’S SANTA, with less than three months to go before his big night, and he’s sitting in his rocker by the fireplace.
Normally, that would be a good thing, an iconic picture of joyful Christmastime repose.
But these are not normal times.
It is the middle of the afternoon.
Santa should be out supervising the elves and their last-minute toy
making, and going over logistics with Rudolph — that sort of stuff.
But seen in the flickering light cast by a dying fire, Santa’s
expression reveals that he is not in good cheer. In fact, he seems
completely stressed. His snow-white beard is unkempt and graying. The
trademark twinkle is gone from his eyes, replaced with a mirthless
fatigue. He’s lost weight.
“It’s not been a ho-ho-ho kind of year,” he confesses, gazing contemplatively into the crackling embers.
The cause of Santa’s winter of discontent? Global warming.
That well-documented phenomenon, the melting of the Arctic ice cap, is
forcing Santa to move from his one and only home and into a three-story
neo-gingerbread-style green house that he designed and built himself.
The peril Santa faces is evident outside the window of his old house,
the one he and Mrs. Claus have called home all their lives, the one
that he, now sitting in its living room, seems to be having a very hard
time leaving. His front yard of glistening ice used to extend to the
horizon; now the Arctic waters lap only 30 feet from his doorstep.
“Another year or two, and this place will be completely submerged,” he
says. “As it is, the elves keep falling in the drink, and I have to
keep fishing them out.”
In this exclusive interview, Santa is anything but jolly.
AMERICAN WAY: So, how’s the move going?
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?
SANTA:
It won’t. Oh, I’ve been irritable, so there may be a few more names
than usual on the Naughty list. But I just got a new GPS; I’m ready to
go.
AW: A GPS? I thought you just went everywhere, like magic.
SANTA: The
new system’s been a lifesaver. I can’t tell you how lost we used to
get. [He grabs a small monitor.] Here, check this out. It not only
tells me the way, but it also helps me avoid airline traffic. Oh, and
it’s got Bluetooth, so I can check in with Mrs. Claus while I’m
driving. I just love it.
AW: I understand your new place is environmentally sensitive.
SANTA: Yep.
Wind-powered electricity. Bamboo floors. Ergonomic workstations run on
vegetable oil for the elves. I like to think of it as Santa’s Green
Workshop.
AW: Why?
SANTA: Well,
I can either do nothing — just hope that things get better and end up
with water at my doorstep again in another few years — or I can do what
I can to help reverse the situation. The way I look at it, building a
more environmentally sensitive place is a Christmas gift to myself.
Mrs. Claus walks into the room, carrying a tray of cookies.
“I brought you a little treat, dear,” she says. “Then you really ought
to get back to work.” “You’re right,” he replies, reaching for a sugar
cookie.
As he chews first one, then another, he turns to Mrs. Claus, and a
broad, joyful smile spreads across his face; it’s as if her presence
has clicked something on inside him. A rosy hue returns to his cheeks,
and the twinkle is back in his eyes.
After downing a glass of milk, he all but leaps out of both his rocking chair and his contemplative mood.
Santa picks up a cell phone. “Do you have those Naughty and Nice lists
updated?” he asks. “E-mail the latest versions to me. I need to be
checking them twice, you know.”
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