Little Susie dreams little dreams of little things.
She’s starting to dream of bigger things.
Sadly, the bigger things don’t fit in her little dreams.
So, she’s trying to dream bigger dreams to fit them in.
Oh no! Those bigger dreams won’t fit in her tiny head!
“I need a bigger head for my dreams,” she said to her mother.
“Ask Santa for one.”
To make a short story shorter, yeah, Santa gave her one.
She’s the kid over there with the gigantic head, full of big dreams.
(Most of which involve being able to walk again without falling over.)
Category: Christmas
Runaway Santa
When Christmas is over, we round up the Santas, herd them into trucks, and ship them back to the camps.
Radio tags help catch the strays.
We give each Santa a checkup, fix the damaged ones, and read through field reports that track which strains were effective where.
Beards by environment, bell-ringers versus department stores… we analyze everything.
This helps us plan our training and deployment strategy for the next holiday season.
And how to predict severe failures.
In the basement, the worst Santas are kept.
The molesters. The axe-murderers.
Oh no. The lock is broken?
Quick! Sound the alarm!
Checking it twice
Santa’s making his list, checking it twice.
Too bad for John Bettencourt (now known as Paul Miller of Orlando, Florida) that he doesn’t check with the Witness Protection Program.
John wanted chocolate-covered truffles from his favorite online catalog store, but instead of using a new shopper ID, he used his old one.
Santa didn’t notice. But the crooked defense contractor that John blew the whistle on did.
A box arrived the next day.
“Mmmmmmmm… truffles!” John said.
He opened it, setting off the parcel bomb.
It wasn’t reindeer on the rootops, but bloody bits of John raining down on them.
Elves Live
Happy The Elf woke up in the North Pole Infirmary.
His head hurt. Everything looked weird.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You had a rough Christmas,” says the lab technicians, putting equipment on a cart. “Everyone did. But you’re all fine now.”
Happy looked around and saw all the other elves in the Infirmary, in various states of stupor and lucidity.
Santa watched them through a one-way mirror.
“Poor bastards,” he said. “They have no memory of the Hell I put them through every year.”
“And neither do you, you old bastard” said a technician, sliding a needle into Santa’s neck.
Christmas 2010
Despite the cold, I will go out today. I do this every Christmas.
I bundle myself up with a thick coat, woolen cap, gloves, and scarf.
Then, I walk the streets, handing out ten dollar bills to the homeless.
“Go get yourself something,” I say. “Merry Christmas.”
They smile and thank me: “Bless you!”
I don’t wait. I keep walking, handing out more bills.
When I run out, I put my cap, scarf, and coat on a sleeping drunk.
Yeah, they money’s counterfeit. Witnesses will point this dumb sap out to the cops.
Time to move to a new city.
Baby Brother
Lisa’s parents knew what would be on the Christmas List.
The same thing she’d asked for every year: a baby brother.
Her birth had been difficult. The doctors had performed a hysterectomy to stop the bleeding.
And her parents didn’t want to adopt or hire a surrogate.
“You’re plenty enough,” they said to Lisa.
So, she took matters into her own hands.
Sure, the paper said it was an electrical short from the tree.
Lisa said she saw smoke, rescued the neighbor’s baby first, couldn’t go back in because of the flames.
Just wait until she wants a baby sister.
Downsizing
Remember “Peace on Earth, Good Will To All Men?”
Well, there’s a new phrase making the rounds this holiday season: “Do More With Less.”
Everybody’s suffering. Even Santa’s workshop.
He laid off a bunch of elves. Elf unemployment’s awful The cookie and shoe manufacturing industries have been automating production and moving factories to China.
He doesn’t need the reindeer either. Now he just delivers stuff through Fedex or UPS, whatever’s cheapest.
Pretty soon, he’ll just do it all through Amazon or iTunes.
Mrs. Claus wants to retire to Florida.
Real estate’s cheap there.
And not a fucking frozen wasteland, either.
Everybody wants
I remember when the Christmas gift that everybody wanted was a new electronic toy or gadget.
Teddy bears that played storytelling tapes.
Video games.
Plastic spiders you could throw at the wall and watch them crawl down it.
As computing and materials sciences advanced, so did the latest and greatest holiday gifts.
Everybody wants it. And so do you.
Now that things have taken a turn for the worse, you’re lucky to get clothes, used or new.
Or, for the truly desperate, somewhere warm to sleep…
No, the world doesn’t end with a bang or a whimper, but Christmas carols.
Christmas 2009
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Why does NORAD track Santa on Christmas Eve?
It’s part of his work-release agreement.
The rest of the year, his parole officer watches him.
He started with dealing, leaving a few extra packages here and there, picking up cash with the milk and cookies.
Then, distribution. That sack holds a lot of presents, you know. A few extra hundred kilos, properly wrapped. What’s the difference?
Keeping the toys going was bad enough. Keeping all his sources, pushers, and buyers straight required a lot of speed.
He’s clean now. No drugs. A natural jolly.
He’d better stay on our nice list.
The Truce
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There’s a demon standing at the gates of Heaven.
He bangs on the lock.
“Let him in,” The Lord says to Peter.
Every year, Satan offers up a Christmas Truce.
And every year, God declines it.
“Just as my son is the Prince of Peace, Lucifer is the Prince of Lies.”
The demon returned to hell, message torn in half.
Satan wept, black tears rolling down his greasy cheeks.
“We will honor it anyway,” he sighed.
With an oily rag, he wipes his face and turns to his minions.
“No missions today,” he says. “Instead, we will train for tomorrow.”