Michaelís Christ­mas Sto­ry ñ Pt. 1

ëTwas the week before Christ­mas, when all through the house not a crea­ture was stir­ring, not even a mouse.† But Mrs. San­ta Claus was read­ing the riot act.

In fact, it was­nít Mrs. San­ta Claus; it was­nít a twin­kling eyed old lady for the old San­ta Claus cot­tage indus­try had mod­ern­ized to take account of the growth of pop­u­la­tion and the relat­ed mod­ern developments.

Nowa­days it real­ly is a big busi­ness with prop­er pro­fes­sion­al man­age­ment, though at the same time, retain­ing the mag­ic of Christmas.

The chief exec­u­tive (Mrs. San­ta Claus) was, in fact Ms. Elke Claus­son, an MBA grad­u­ate of the Trond­heim ÿkonomiske H¯gskole, the lead­ing busi­ness school Arc­tic Industries.

The Christ­mas enter­prise had moved to north­ern Nor­way from the North Pole some years ear­li­er in order to be clos­er to the main cen­ters of pro­duc­tion and the lead­ing Christ­mas elf and fairy train­ing schools.

Miss Claus­son had tak­en over as CEO only in July fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion in dis­grace of the pri­or incum­bent, a Mr. Skole-Trusers­son.† She had been faced with a major task of restruc­tur­ing and reor­ga­ni­za­tion fol­low­ing years of neglect of the operation.

A major task had been the elf orga­ni­za­tion.† Mr. Skole-Trusers­son had unfor­tu­nate­ly neglect­ed this com­plete­ly and the result was that the elves had become thor­ough­ly indis­ci­pline.† Instead of attend­ing prop­er­ly to their work, they had tak­en to sit­ting around play­ing video games, brows­ing on the inter­net, drink­ing in the local bars.

As well as neglect­ing their work, many of the elves had fall­en into thor­ough­ly bad pat­terns of behav­ior and when Miss Claus­son arrived she found that the Christ­mas fairies had tak­en to wear­ing trousers to work because most of the elves found it amus­ing to creep up behind the fairies and flip their skirts up and even try to pull their knick­ers down.

Miss Claus­son very quick­ly made a start to whip­ping the oper­a­tion into shape ñ lit­er­al­ly!† She began with a regime of ìsauna, snow and birch.î† This was the old tra­di­tion­al pro­ce­dure for bad elves at the Christ­mas Com­pa­ny.† First a sauna, to ìopen the poresî and then a few min­utes sit­ting in the snow to make the thighs and bot­tom good and sen­si­tive, and then a good sound birching.

Now, Miss Claus­son was a great respecter of tra­di­tion but she was also very aware of the need for mod­ern­iza­tion of tra­di­tion­al prac­tices.† She quick­ly real­ized that due to the com­bi­na­tion of a very large num­ber of elves and the extreme­ly bad behav­ior of so many of them, there was a risk of deforestation.

As a result, she placed an order for a range of tawses from the pre­mier man­u­fac­tur­er in Scot­land (MC Cus­toms, suc­ces­sors to Messrs. Johan Dick of Lochgel­ly.)† She ordered a range of Medi­um, Heavy and X‑H in the two and three tail ver­sions and she also ordered a num­ber of com­pact ver­sions that she could keep in her hand­bag or her apron pocket.

This solved the prob­lem of defor­esta­tion and also made it pos­si­ble for instant ret­ri­bu­tion as there was no longer any need for the time to make a birch when pun­ish­ment was need­ed.† She also quick­ly rec­og­nized that the tra­di­tion­al thick woolen tights and under­pants that were part of the old elf uni­form meant that it took up too much time in prepa­ra­tion when an elf had earned a smack­ing on the bare bottom.

Her MBA stood her in good stead as she solved this prob­lem.† She intro­duced the old Scot­tish method of instant strap­ping on the hands, and rein­forced this by elim­i­nat­ing the thick tights and putting the elves back into short trousers.† This meant that a hard smack­ing round the tops of the legs could be giv­en on the spot with no delay.

The woolen under­pants soon fol­lowed the thick tights into obliv­ion and were replaced by thin nylon knick­ers which pro­vid­ed lit­tle pro­tec­tion when an elf earned a bot­tom warm­ing.† And for those recal­ci­trant elves who per­sist­ed in the ridicu­lous ìgameî of skirt flip­ping and knick­er pulling, well they found them­selves bare from waist down ñ no tights, under­pants or even knickers.

And the final ele­ment of the solu­tion to the elf prob­lem (many elves but only one Miss Claus­son) she solved by insti­tut­ing a ìmon­i­tor sys­temî among the Christ­mas fairies.† She des­ig­nat­ed the senior fairies as Mon­i­tors and pro­vid­ed them with a large and a small strap and the autho­riza­tion to pun­ish the elves.

Of course, for par­tic­u­lar­ly bad behav­ior, an elf would make the lone­ly trek to Miss Claus­sonís office to be dealt with by her.† In fact, it was­nít such a ìlone­ly trekî as each evening after sup­per would see a line of tear­ful elves lined up out­side her office.† And of course, a pro­ces­sion of howl­ing and bawl­ing elves com­ing out of her office.† The fairies used to joke that when Rudolf would retire, then San­ta would be able to guide his sleigh by putting one of the red bot­tomed elves at the front.

And that, of course brings us to San­ta him­self.† Con­trary to com­mon belief, San­ta is not the head of the Christ­mas Cor­po­ra­tion ñ that is the CEO, Miss Claus­son.† ìSan­taî is just a mid­dle man­age­ment func­tionary, although in many ways, the pub­lic face of the operation.

ìSan­taî was new in the job since mid Octo­ber and it was his first job out of uni­ver­si­ty.† He had grad­u­at­ed with a degree in Soci­ol­o­gy from Uni­ver­sitetet for milj¯- og bioviten­skap in Aas.† His name was Michael Ta-Truser-Neds­son, and one may judge his qual­i­ty from the fact that when asked why he chose that uni­ver­si­ty in that place (Aas) his answer was ìI like look­ing at girl­sí bottoms.î

Miss Claus­son was increas­ing­ly con­cerned about Michaelís work eth­ic and gen­er­al approach.† He showed a ten­den­cy to asso­ciate with the least well behaved elves and Miss Claus­son was begin­ning to sus­pect that he got involved in the same kind of non­sense that she had begun to root out among the elves.

He always seemed to be there, look­ing up, when the fairies were doing their fly­ing prac­tices and once or twice Miss Claus­son was almost sure that he was try­ing to see up her skirt.† But she had been patient and giv­en him the ben­e­fit of the doubt.

As we said at the begin­ning ìit was the week before Christ­masî and as a new San­ta, Michael was to go out on a test run with the sleigh and rein­deer.† It was nec­es­sary to famil­iar­ize him­self with the basics of the route to be fol­lowed and prac­tice roof land­ings, and chim­ney descents, and very impor­tant­ly to ensure that the Christ­mas Mag­ic was being effec­tive­ly used so that the occu­pants of the hous­es would not see San­ta or be aware of his visit.

As we also said, Miss Claus­son was read­ing the riot act.† In fact, she was qui­et­ly fum­ing as she wait­ed Michaelís return.† She had a thick bun­dle of pink mes­sage slips that had come in through­out the night.† They were com­plaints called in by house­hold­ers.† Michael seem­ing­ly had not mas­tered the Christ­mas invis­i­bil­i­ty mag­ic, and there were many calls from ladies who had encoun­tered ìSan­taî peek­ing through a bed­room or bath­room window.

Even­tu­al­ly the sleigh appeared, trav­el­ling far too fast and mak­ing a sud­den final turn that knocked the chim­ney off the house.† Miss Claus­son opened her desk draw­er and took out the ìbig strapî ñ the three tail ìre­for­ma­to­ryî mod­el and grim­ly set off to the sleigh garage.

When she got there she was faced with an unsteady Michael, clear­ly full of an excess of Christ­mas Spir­it (not to men­tion Christ­mas wine and beer) and he was clum­si­ly haul­ing a big sack off the back of the sleigh.

Miss Claus­son was tak­en aback as the ìtest runî does not involve deliv­ery of gifts or even involve tak­ing a sack.† She demand­ed to know what it was and was spun a tale about ìOh just things that were lying around that I thought I bet­ter tidy up.î† Miss Claus­son was extreme­ly angry by this stage and boxed his ears sound­ly and pulled the sack away.

The con­tents can be sum­ma­rized in one word — ìknick­er­sî ñ hun­dreds of pairs.† Michael must have emp­tied the knick­er draw­er in every house he visited.

Miss Claus­son looked him right in the eye and in the grimmest imag­in­able tones, she told him:

 

Ta truser nede akku­rat nÂ. Jeg kom­mer til  klaske deg til du ikke kan sitte ned.

(Christ­mas col­ors rep­re­sent­ing Miss Claus­sonís fes­tive mood.)

 

 

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