Vintage Holidays

Ecrits Blogophilia Week 26.16 – Vintage Holidays
Hard Bonus: Incorporate a line from your favorite Christmas carol or holiday song
Easy Bonus: Include an elf

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As we dream by the fire, Santa’s elves are busy making their deadlines up at the North Pole. One type A Elf we shall call Anita is really struggling to get her work done. It would seem Elfie in shipping and wrapping smudged all the gift tags and Queenie in QA missed it. So with only two days left until take off, Anita has taken it upon herself to go in and remedy the situation before Santa finds out.

“Blinky and Noggin I need you to do me a favor.” Anita said with fervor, ” I need you to round up the entire crew and tell them we have to go into overtime tonight.”

“Aww nooo,” Blinky whined, “I have floor seats for the Reindeer Games tonight.”
“Well cancel it,” barked Anita, “We have an emergency on our hands.”
Blinky sighed, “fine what else do you need us to do?”
“How is your penmanship?”
“Not great, why?”
“Can you write in cursive?”
“Kind of.”
“I need 2.2 Billion new gift tags in Santa’s handwriting by tomorrow morning.”
Blinky fainted straight into little Noggins arms, and had to be revived with smelling sprinkles.

2 hours later…

An assembly line of 500 Elves set to work writing out the correct names and reapplying them to the proper gifts. It was not going well. Not well at all.
No one could master Santa’s exact script, his fanciful loops alone would take a professional calligrapher. Anita was beginning to lose hope. She realized only Santa had the magic to pull this off, but she could not face telling him that the Elves screwed up. They had to carry on the traditions of the Vintage Holidays and present these gifts authentically.

Anita paced trying to think of a way to get the tags done without a printer or any sort of technology. “Besides Santa, who else has the power to bring us a Christmas miracle?” she whispered under her breath.

“I might know who can help us,” chirped Chippy from behind the water cooler. “Did you know Santa has been bestowing the Scout Elves with magical powers since 2005, they can do all kinds of things we Crew Elves are not yet capable of.”
“No kidding?” Anita was all ears, “Like what? How can they possibly get 2.2 Billion packages beautifully addressed in,” she looked down at her peppermint watch, “ugh three hours.”

“Well if every child has a Scout Elf and that Scout Elf has magic, then we just have them beautify the labels as the packages arrive.” Chippy’s plan seemed fool proof.

“But what if Santa sees these crappy gift tags while he is delivering the gifts? He will not be happy at all.”

“I happen to know that Santa is farsighted, he never wears his spectacles on the night he drives the sleigh. He just focuses on driving and dropping, the packages practically deliver themselves.”

“Hmm, okay, so this just might work.”
Anita immediately put the word out through the telepathic Snowline informing each Scout Elf of their mission.

Anita stood by nervously as she watched Santa loading up the sleigh, clip board in hand she tried to look busy and efficient. Santa seemed extra jolly tonight so that was a good sign that he suspected nothing was amiss. When the last red sack was loaded Anita let out a long exhausting sigh. Crossing her fingers she looked over to Chippy, who gave her a wink and a nod.

Chippy was confident all would go smoothly. He had a lot of faith in those Scout Elves.

Santa was nearing his first chimney, the landing looked clear and he had his first bag of packages at the ready. It was a smooth landing and a nice wide chimney, Santa was down it in no time and just nearing the tree.

Rodney the Elf was hiding in the tree waiting to intercept the packages and fix the tags, when suddenly a sleepy child came walking down the stairs in her red plaid nightgown eyes wide as she saw the flash of red and white scurrying back up the chimney.
“Santa! Santa wait!” Aria cried out in hopes of meeting the Jolly old Elf. But he was gone. “Was he even real?” now she doubted herself. She had to see if the gifts were really from Santa, so she rushed toward the tree.
Rodney had no time to even look at the packages, he just closed his eyes and pictured Santa’s signature on the tags.

Aria picked up the pretty box and admired Santa’s writing, “Oh he is Real!”

THE END