Why It Matters

This is the story of a middle-aged couple struggling through another Christmas. What makes this story a little different is the faded celebrity of said couple: The once beautiful ingenue now weighed down by both the physical and emotional weight that accumulates ever so slowly year after year throughout a broken marriage; and her husband, once celebrated as the most famous reindeer ever to go down in history, his 15 minutes of fame now long past, barely getting by these days on a steady diet of sour oats and faded glories.

The couple share a son, 13 year-old Hermes, named in honor of his father’s long estranged best friend whose gender fluidity the boy shares. This, too, embitters the father, this notion that he somehow cursed his only son by naming him for, of all things, a dentist elf.

“I just don’t get that kid,” Rudy said.

“Of course not, you don’t even try,” replied Clarice, not bothering to look up from her tablet.

“He’s a nice looking young buck. Strong. Has your family’s nose. Why the hell do you let him prance around in your fake eyelashes?”

“You know Hermes doesn’t identify as a buck or a doe.”

“Well news flash, that’s all there is. You’re either born with horns or not, that’s it. You think he’s going to get invited to join any reindeer games wearing your polka dot hair bow? Hell, we don’t even have hair!”

“We have fur.”

“You know what I mean, Clarice,” Rudy snapped.

“It seems to me that somebody has forgotten who he is,” Clarice calmly replied. She long ago stopped taking his bait, especially when he was a couple of buckets into the sour oats.

“I know exactly who I am,” Rudy shot back, and he fired up his moneymaker–that glorious nose, that glowing red proboscis that was his claim to fame. “You think that little freak can say the same? No? Didn’t think so.”

As far as Rudy was concerned this ended the conversation, a point he punctuated by turning up the television volume. He leaned back in his recliner, mash bucket in hoof, and shifted his focus to Morning Cocoa With Sparkle and Whimsy, the Polar News Network’s (PNN’s) number one rated show. Rudy never had a thing for elves, but Whimsy was quite a sight with her big blond hair and those bare, stubby legs dangling from the edge of her chair. Sparkle’s lantern jaw and lacquered coif were meant to work the same magic on lady viewers, but Rudy doubted any doe worth rutting would swoon over a two foot tall man.

The co-hosts were mid-argument regarding the upcoming election, the first competitive race the North Pole had seen since Krampus almost pulled off a write-in upset back in 1598. “The Polar people want change,” Whimsy said.”They’re sick of the socialist handouts, the–“

“Oh come on!” Sparkle interrupted. “That’s a cheap talking point and you know it! The whole Polar economy depends upon what you call ‘socialist handouts!”

“Truth hurts, doesn’t it Sparky? You know wages at Santa’s Castle are kept artificially low so that a bunch of ungrateful, bratty takers can have free toys. These kids aren’t even Polar citizens! What do I care if Little Miss Down In Australia has a holly jolly Christmas when right here at home toy makers aren’t even taking home enough candy to feed their families?”

“You’re just repeating Heat Miser talking points,” Sparkle said. “This Santa economy is the strongest that the North Pole has ever seen.”

“Compared to what? That old fossil has sat in the castle since the beginning of time! We need change. We need a proven leader like Heat Miser to lead us through this new millennium.”

“Proven leader? What has he ever done?”

“Well for starters just look at his work on climate change. My husband, Jiffy, is talking about planting a succulent garden. A succulent garden! And polar bear attacks are at an all-time low.”

“That’s because there’s no more polar bears!”

“So we agree that Heat Miser’s policies work,” Whimsy gloated.

Clarice glanced up from her tablet. “That Heat Miser is so…I can’t even stand to look at his face. He’s always so angry.”

Rudy reached for the remote control to increase the volume again, his usual gambit when his wife interrupted his show, but instead he replied: “I like him. He says what we’re all thinking. Santa just tells us what he thinks we want to hear.”

“Such as?”

“Where do you want me to start? That an economy based on handouts is unsustainable. That climate change will bring new industries to the North Pole. Think about all of the untapped resources under the permafrost, think about tourism dollars. You think anybody but Yukon Cornelius would spend a dime to vacation on Arctic tundra? And then there’s Santa’s, um, interests.”

“Don’t you dare,” Clarice warned.

“All I’m saying is the old man dresses in red velvet and is so obsessed with kids he hires midgets.”

“They’re called little people.”

“Oh no! I’m not woke like perfect Clarice! Cancel me! Cancel me! Pack up your little buck-doe weirdo son and move in with Blitzen why don’t you? That’s what you always wanted!”

“We went out once in high school! When are you going to let it go?” Clarice cried.

Rudy galloped onto the front porch and took a big drag on a candy cigarette. The peppermint filled his lungs with a blast of soothing, icy air, or maybe the minus 50 degree temperature did the trick. When did it all go so wrong? Just yesterday, it seemed, he owned the place. Team leader on Sleigh Bell One, Santa’s elite flying reindeer squad. Prettiest doe in the North Pole on his hoof. Known by the natives as “Nix Blix,” or “Bumble tamer,” a title he didn’t earn but he never corrected them. Next thing he knew he had a fawn on the way and Sleigh Bell One was grounded in favor of electric drones. What was Santa going to do when they ran out of juice somewhere over the Sahara? Nobody cared. They all bought into the lie and now good, hard working reindeer like Rudy couldn’t find work.

And what was the point of it all, anyway?

Rudy ground the butt of his candy cigarette beneath his hoof and turned to reenter the house when something flickered in the distance, a movement familiar to his muscles first and then his mind. Over in the clearing where the new Amazon warehouse was coming soon, Hermes repeatedly ran and leapt into the air before sprawling onto the ice, legs akimbo.

With the faintest twitch of his flabby haunches, Rudy was airborne. He landed softly on the ice with a chipper “What say, kid?” and skidded to a stop hockey-style next to his prone son.

“Hi, Pop,” Hermes replied.

“What are you doing out here by yourself?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing my Christmas balls. You’re trying to fly.”

“Can we not make a big deal out of this?”

“No, no, not a big deal,” Rudy said. “I was a young buck once myself. I remember once a long time ago–“

Hermes’s big brown eyes rolled dramatically behind his mother’s false lashes. “Here we go with the cis-reindeer head games.”

“Whoa, whoa–buck, doe, it’s all good as long as they don’t come on to me, if you know what I mean. I just flew over to see if you wanted some pointers. I was watching you from the house and I noticed–“

“Dad, could you just not, please? I’m sure you’re full of Boomer wisdom, but I can handle it.”

“Cool, cool, do your thing,” Rudy said, and if not for a quick “Your bow is crooked” jab before leaping into the sky Hermes may have believed him.

Clarice cherished these moments when Rudy left the house, taking the tension that permeated each carefully decorated room with him. Since losing his job he rarely left the ratty old recliner that clashed with her otherwise tasteful furniture.

She poured herself a cup of hot chocolate and sat at the head of the kitchen table with her tablet. Heat Miser dominated her news feed with his ever more outrageous taunts: referring to his opponent in the upcoming election as “Satan Claws” while claiming that Santa headed a global child slavery ring; promising to build a wall of ice blocks to protect the North Pole from Bumbles and humpback whales which “can walk on land, believe me;” his cruel impersonation of Charlie in the Box. What rendered the Heat Miser phenomenon so strange, Clarice thought, was the enthusiasm with which many of her fellow North Pole residents embraced him. Photos and video from his rallies showed elves, reindeer, and even misfit toys cheering him on. When asked by a reporter, Charlie in the Box himself enthused that Heat Miser was “one of us.”

But it was the risk he represented to her Polar way of life that truly disgusted Clarice. Heat Miser’s vision for the North Pole as a tropical resort paradise wherein Santa’s Castle served as “a beautiful resort, the best” meant certain extinction for thousands of toy makers, seamstresses, candy makers, and, yes, reindeer.

It was all more than she cared to think about, so Clarice toggled over to Facebook. She straightened her neck and froze, scanning the air for any sign of Rudy, then typed a name into the site’s search box. There he was, all 12 points of him as chiseled and handsome as he was all those years ago in flight school. She scrolled through his recent posts, a hodgepodge of family photos (his wife and kids were beautiful, she noted) and socially conscious musings like “I Stand With Santa” and “You can’t spell ‘polar bear’ without ‘polar.” Her hoof hovered over the “Send Friend Request” button for a long moment, and then with a sigh Clarice switched off the tablet and finished her hot chocolate.

Three days before the big election, downtown Christmas Village was busier than a cobbler elf shoeing a toy centipede. Alongside the caroling, taffy pulling, and last minute shopping, a large crowd gathered for Heat Miser’s final rally. Disgruntled elves wore tape over their jingle bells, a symbol of their muted voices during the recent labor disputes at Santa’s Castle. Some carried handmade signs, red and green paint decrying the socialist nature of Santa’s enterprise, and glittery letters demanding more candy and fewer hours.

Rudy, Clarice, and Hermes strolled along the periphery of the big crowd of little people. “Horrible,” Clarice said. “After all that Santa has done for them.”

“Yeah, treated them like a bunch of holiday Oompa Loompas,” Rudy muttered.

“Father, you can’t say that,” Hermes whispered.

“Say what?”

“The O-L word.”

“What, you think they don’t know they’re short?”

“They don’t like being called O-Ls. It makes them angry.”

“So what? The little bastards are already angry, look at them. And you know what? I don’t blame them. Santa is a user.”

“Rudy!” Clarice gasped. “How can you say that?”

“U-S-E-R. He uses the elves. He uses the reindeer. He even uses the G.D. Bumble to stick stars on top of tall trees.”

“Oh, that’s ridiculous.”

“And what about the kids? You think he delivers all of those presents out of the goodness of his heart? It’s self promotion, brand building. Without the kids’ hype you really believe he’d still have that endorsement deal with Coca-Cola? Hell no. Coke could have anybody–Patrick Mahomes, Steph Curry, the Easter Bunny. It’s those kids who keep the Coke checks rolling in. Those checks are for cash, by the way, so why do the rest of us get paid in candy?”

“You’re talking nonsense,” Clarice protested with a shake of her bow.

“Am I? Tell me, when was the last time he delivered a present to an adult? Yeah, no snappy comeback for that. Just what I thought,” Rudy gloated, and then he turned to his son. “Listen, kid, if you want to learn to fly for fun, cool, but if you think you have a job waiting for you at the Castle forget it. It’s all drones now. Us reindeer are out to pasture, useless, just like the human grown-ups. When you can’t do anything for Santa anymore, Santa won’t do anything for you. These angry little bastards are onto something. I’m voting Heat Miser.”

“Father!”

“Rudy!”

“Oh, deal with it, snowflakes,” Rudy said.

You already know what happened next. Heat Miser didn’t exactly win the election, but after seemingly endless recounts and legal filings, Santa conceded because, in his words: “This is what’s best for the North Pole. Christmas isn’t a time for bickering and dissension. It’s bigger than me, bigger than all of us, and that is something worth much more than one election. Besides, Mother and I have long looked forward to the day when we can relax and enjoy our hobbies, she with her needlework and I with Sharp Dressed Man, my ZZ Top tribute band.”

That brings us to today, Christmas Eve. It turns out that during the past three months since the election, Heat Miser has done nothing to prepare for Christmas. One might even conclude that he has actively sabotaged the most important holiday on the calendar by firing all of the elves, allegedly as a cost saving measure to “increase shareholder value” but really because they refused to sign loyalty oaths, and selling off the electric drones to some “tree hugging Christmas whack job.” If he’d recruited a new sleigh team that wouldn’t have been so bad; after all, the drones didn’t exactly convey holiday magic when silhouetted against a full moon.

And now PNN reports that not only is Heat Miser missing but that every piece of candy in the North Pole treasury is gone, too. Santa has been pulled off stage at Tennessee Tuxedo’s, where Sharp Dressed Man was in the middle of a blistering cover of “Tush,” and has been rushed via ground sleigh to Miser Tower, formerly known as Santa’s Castle.

Down in the press room, Press Secretary Jingle steps to the lectern. “We’re going to keep this brief, as we have a lot going on as you can well imagine, but I’ll update you on where we are. In the interest of time, we won’t be taking any questions today. Pursuant to article seven of the Polar Constitution, in the event that our leader is unable to serve for any reason the Holiday Committee may seat a temporary proxy. After the events this morning with Mr. Miser, representatives Thomas Turkey, Uncle Sam, and Martin Luther King convened an emergency meeting. Given the time sensitivity of this situation, this being Christmas Eve, the Committee unanimously agreed that Santa’s years of experience were mandatory to guide us through this crisis. Mr. Claus is on site and has reached a stop gap agreement with the Elf Union to finish toy production. They only have a few hours to catch up three months’ worth of toys, but their leadership assures us that they can do it.”

“How?” shouts a reporter from The Christmas Times.

“Elfin magic,” Jingle replies.

“What’s that?”

“Mostly Red Bull. Look, I said no questions. The Sleigh Bell One team has reassembled down in the stables, but I’ll be honest with you: With exception to Blitzen the team looks pretty out of shape. Our engineers estimate that it’s going to take an additional reindeer this year to get off the ground.”

“But there aren’t any more reindeer,” someone shouts.

“There’s one, if he’ll fly,” Jingle says. “Thank you very much, and may God bless the North Pole.”

As Jingle rushes from the podium, reporters shout questions: “Who is this additional reindeer? What will happen if toy production falls short? Does Sharp Dressed Man play ‘Cheap Sunglasses?’”

Out in the suburban neighborhood known as Reindeer Estates, Rudy is deep into his third bucket of sour oats when the Sleigh Bell One ground crew jingles his doorbell. One quick glance at the drunken buck and the elves know he’s unfit to fly.

“Can we get some coffee in him?” Razzle asks.

“That’s an old wives’ tale,” Dazzle replies.

“You want flying? Why don’t you two little punks take a flying leap,” Rudy slurs.

“Maybe if we walk him around,” Razzle suggests.

“Does all of your medical information come from Laverne & Shirley reruns?” Dazzle says. “He’s just going to have to sleep it off. I guess there won’t be a Christmas this year.”

The clip clop of hoof steps punctuates this last, sad comment; light footsteps coming down the hallway. Every eye in the crowded living room turns to see young Hermes standing in front of them, Clarice’s largest bow pinned to his head and a pair of brass and leather steampunk goggles over his eyes. “I’ll do it,” he says.

“What the hell are you supposed to be?” his drunken father replies.

The whole town, it seems, lines the runway behind Santa’s Castle this evening. If the bulging sack weighing down his sleigh is any indication, the elves came through with a least one toy each for every good boy and girl throughout the world.

And speaking of bulging, retirement apparently has been good to the reindeer of Sleigh Bell One. Each of them, with the aforementioned exception of Blitzen, is at least 200 pounds overweight. Dasher complains between belches about his gastric reflux while Prancer nervously downs candy cigarettes like a character in a Mamet play. Dancer, now going by Danny, mutters, “I’m getting too old for this shit,” which makes Rudy laugh from behind the crowd control barricades.

The ground crew leads Hermes from the stables and harnesses him in the lead position. He’s half the size of the grizzled old veterans, but behind his goggles the young buck’s eyes sparkle with double the determination.

Well wishers greet Santa with rousing cheers and jingling bells as he approaches the heavy sleigh. He climbs into the driver’s seat and Bobo, this year’s helper elf as chosen by the audience of PNN’s popular Elf Date, stealthily snatches the Billy Gibbons skull cap from that legendary head and replaces it with the famous red and white fur stocking cap. Per both tradition and contractual obligation, Santa raises a glass bottle of Coca-Cola Classic and toasts the crowd. “No time for speeches this year, my friends,” he begins, and this, too, is something of a tradition. “We have enough to do and but one single night in which to do it.

“The North Pole has been through quite an ordeal these past few months, as have all of you. I understand how tempting it can be to give into fear, anger, greed, selfishness, and the promised comforts of tropical heat. What make this Christmas so special is that we faced those temptations and chose instead the kindness and generosity we know as Christmas Spirit.”

“Did we though, or did we all just kind of fall back into old patterns after Heat Miser took off with the treasury?” Razzle whispers.

“Just go with it,” Dazzle replies. “It’s a nice speech.”

“Now let’s light this candle!” Santa bellows with a belly shaking “Ho Ho Ho.” The crowd cheers, “Gimme All Your Lovin’s” throbbing bass line shakes the sleigh’s sheet metal, and Hermes throws his full weight against his harness. The team groans and the sleigh’s runners break free of the ice. The beast lumbers up the runway, slowly picking up speed. Halfway down the clearing the team is barely trotting.

“Come on, you little bastard, drive that team,” Rudy urges under his breath.

They’re gaining momentum now, nostrils steaming and jiggling flanks foaming. The runway’s end closes quickly: 200 feet, 100 feet, 50 feet, and then–

And then Hermes leaps for the Moon. The team follows, bouncing once at the very end of the runway before committing to the sky. The crowd erupts in cheers. “Good job, buddy!” Clarice shouts toward the vanishing sleigh.

“You weird, magnificent, little bastard,” Rudy smirks. He’s never felt so proud.

“Well, baby,” he says to his wife, “What a day. Look, I know I lost the Christmas spirit for a minute there, but after getting replaced by a robot and then struggling to accept the kid–well, I guess if I’m really being honest to accept myself–I mean, you can understand how I lost the spirit. But you were right there, my rock, just like when we were kids. And now I want to be there for you. No more candy cigarettes, no more sour oats, and I’m going to get a job, Clarice. I hear Cabela’s is looking to hire reindeer down at their target range. I mean, I can teach people to shoot, right? I don’t have to fly. All I have to do is be the best Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer I can be. I love you, baby, let’s go home.”

“I’m rutting with Blitzen,” Clarice replies. “He understands me.”

“Jesus Christ,” Rudy replies, and he pops a candy cigarette into his mouth. “I”m getting too old for this shit.”

Sleigh bells grow ever quieter in the distance as the crowd hears Santa’s last faint cry: “Merry Christmas to all! And don’t forget that Sharp Dressed Man will be playing Tennessee Tuxedo’s this New Year’s Eve!”