A story a day until there’s a sleigh! This holiday season, I’m sharing a new flash fiction piece inspired by a holiday song every day of December until Christmas. Today’s story is inspired by Back Door Santa.
To Reindeer, Elves, and Board Members:
Due to the evolving nature of home design, it has become necessary for the operations team at North Pole Enterprises to reconsider the most effective method for me, Santa Claus, to enter and exit homes on Christmas Eve.
While the standard chimney technique has always presented its own set of obstacles like soot, lingering embers, and heavy fumes, the consistency with which we could use the chimney made it the best strategy for a century and a half; however, the decline of chimneys in home design and the lack of use of existing chimneys has made this method less reliable in the last half century.
In recent years, we’ve been choosing a method of entry on a house by house basis, but this has caused a lot of stress for team members in the moment and has generated discord among the reindeer. Last year this led to Donder and Blitzen being left behind in Bristol. I am happy to report that these key members of the sleigh team have returned this year despite that incident.
The operations team has been busy at work this year identifying the optimal strategy for entry and exit, and the report they’ve produced, which will be released later this week, suggests that our best option will be to use the back door when there is one available. The back door allows discretion and also will not require as much physical exertion on my part as the chimney entry and exit.
One additional benefit to the back door method is that it will allow us easier access to the kitchen in most homes. In the event that families fail to leave out cookies, milk, etc., I will be able to help myself out on the way out. You know as well as I do that Santa needs his snacks if he’s going to make it around the world in one night.
I am grateful to the operations team for their hard work, and I am looking forward to putting their research into practice on Christmas Eve. With all of us working together, my hope is this will be the best Christmas yet.
Ho ho,
Santa Claus
Sarah Zureick-Brown 