Santa Claus
Santa....Mr. Claus---I'm not sure how I should address you.
Santa will be fine.
Thank you, Santa. I am so excited to be here with you at the North Pole and so thrilled that you said yes to this interview–and during your busiest time of the year! But, I have to take a moment before we begin and describe this room to our readers.
It's just an ordinary family room.
Yes, but it's Santa Claus's family room! So Enlighten Me readers, let me describe the scene. Santa, attired in a pair of chinos, wearing a plaid flannel shirt over his Grateful Dead T-shirt, sits in front of a roaring fire chewing the mouth piece of an old pipe.
I quit smoking the pipe on our 125th wedding anniversary as a present for Maggie.
Maggie?
Mrs. Claus. Margaret Rose Sullivan Claus. There's a bit of leprechaun blood in her family line–it was that impish twinkle in her blue eyes that I first found irresistible. That and her lovely figure...and her sense of humor...her inquiring mind...her sweet smile. That woman, she twists my will around with her winning wiles and thinks I don't know what she's up to! I might as well admit it, the woman walks into the room and, even after a hundred and thirty-seven years, my heart still goes pitter-patter! You know, she decorated this room herself, with an ounce of help from Tinkerbelle.
Tinkerbelle? Tinkerbelle from Peter Pan? She's an interior decorator?
Yes, and she's quite talented. She just finished decorating the home of the elf factory comptroller. Got rid of the excessive gingerbread trim and gave it a definitive arts and crafts feel. I'll see if I can get you in to see it before you leave.
Well, Mrs. Claus and Tinkerbelle did a great job on this room. It is charming and warmly comfortable with a wall of windows looking out over fields of snow and endless sky. A little Frank Sinatra playing lightly in the background....
I love those Nelson Riddle arrangements.
Wonderful paintings on the wall, a gorgeous Monet–that's a Picasso etching and it's signed "To Santa from Pablo!" And a great Andy Warhol portrait of you, Santa! There are books everywhere–in neat piles on the floor and the tables and stacked to bursting in pine bookcases stretching up to the beamed ceiling.
Now wait, keep looking up. Let me get up a here a minute and flick a switch or two. There.
Oh! It's like a planetarium ceiling only three dimensional! All the stars flicker and move!
Three-dimensional navigational night charts - very handy in my line of work. Chauncy Spickling, our computer science elf and a number of his university students built it for me. I bring the young reindeer in here to learn celestial navigation. And every Friday night, right here under the stars, we hold a bedtime storytelling session for the elfins. The little ones all wear their pajamas, eat dozens of my cookies, and drink hot cocoa laced with raspberry syrup. Maggie and I take turns reading aloud to them 'til bedtime.
You bake?
I love to bake–good crusty French breads and sourdoughs, cranberry kuchen and kulich with the white icing and a pink rose atop, warm apple strudel with raisins and nuts, spicy gingerbread, stolen, cakes, pies, cherry tarts, delicious sugar cookies, and my specialty and the elfins' favorites–Santa's Snickerdoodles. I'll give you the recipe before you leave. Your readers can whip up a batch for Christmas Eve. When Mom or Dad or Grandpa reads "The Night Before Christmas" aloud, the kiddies can munch on them while they listen.
What are your favorite books to read aloud to, what did you call them, the elfsters?
Elfins. Elfsters are elfementary age students. Elfins are a bit younger. They're in elfagarten and elfplay- that would be pre-school age to you. The elfettes are the toddlers and at the other end are the elfeens–the teenaged elfs.
As to my favorite read-aloud stories. Mmmhhhh,, we all love Beezus and Ramona. I do have a huge affection for the Pooh stories--not the Disney but the original versions written by A. A. Milne, illustrated by that genius Ernest Shepard. I understand that Mr. Disney had all the best intentions. Walt always sent me an interesting Christmas wish list. He never failed to ask for a whoopee cushion.
But my most favorite books to read aloud are those of Robert McCloskey, William Steig, Virginia Lee Burton, James Marshall, Ezra Jack Keats, and Kevin Henkes. And I can't forget Munro Leaf's The Story of Ferdinand or the marvelous Caps for Sale by Esphry Slobodkina.
In season, the elfeens do love Dickens' Christmas Carol read aloud to them chapter by chapter spanning the course of a few nights. Maggie does the voices of the three ghosts quite eerily, sending chills down their spines! After we have completed the last chapter we watch a DVD of Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol and sing along. Have you seen that one?
No.
Rent it. Best songs written for any Christmas program, and a great little synopsis of Dickens' story, too.
You and Mrs. Claus do a great deal of reading aloud.
Best way to keep those young elves' brains active and growing! For years we didn't watch that much television, terrible reception up here. Then my Maggie, a gourmet cook, read Julia Child's book on French Cooking and was desperate to see her television show. Rollo Negerski, he's the elf captain who trains our seventeen reindeer teams, well, he set up a satellite dish, and we finally got great reception. Our television watching escalated–it was so incendiary. You think you're just going to sit down and watch Bart Simpson for a half an hour and before you know it, it's 11 o'clock, and you've fallen asleep in front of the box.
Then, a few years after we got the satellite dish, we began having problems. Magnolia Blossom, the head of elf toy design department, came to me for our pre-season conference. The new product ideas they had come up with were all television tie-ins–not one original idea! Then our elfeens began gaining weight. The elfsters showed signs in school that they were losing their ability to solve problems and think independently. The toddler elfins' verbal skills began deteriorating. And, the elfettes, whose older brothers and sisters in years past had vocabulary levels at eighteen months of age of 100-200 words, understood and spoke half that number of words.
I tell can you, I began to wonder if the increased pollutants up here had finally seeped into our water system! It was my Maggie who figured out what was happening. She's a teacher, you know, a linguistic expert, speaks 56 different languages, including all three dialects of Elfishtan, and she can read Fairyesque as well.
After polling the elves on the number of hours they watched television–an exhausting task–she conducted her own study and discovered that the elves had vastly underestimated the hours that TV sets were on in their houses! Instead of eating meals together, talking, playing sports and games, getting out and going to the movies, sharing interests, and loving each other, we were plopped in front of the TV becoming couch potatoes. Of course we gained weight! Of course our thinking fell flat and our ideas turned to mush! Of course our children's vocabulary decreased and their imaginations died out! Maggie figured all of this out quick as a flash–that TV is a sedative, not a stimulant–and being a woman of action, came up with a plan.
You dumped all the television sets over the edge of glacier!
No! We just turned off the TVs during meals, so that we would talk to each other again. We encouraged parents to limit their children's TV viewing to weekends. Instead of watching a TV program before bed, we suggested parents read or tell a story. We found that many families had limited time to get to the library, so we bought a book sled that brought free books to people's homes with day and night time hours of operation. And, we put lending libraries in our workplaces, near cafeterias, and started elf-employee book discussion groups.
What happened?
Productivity went up! Ideas flowed! Elves discovered new friends! Families played together, laughing and smiling! Pounds fell like pine cones from a tree! The children's vocabulary, thinking, language, and math skills increased substantially!
People do say that books change their lives!
Everything is much improved around here.
Well Santa, thank you and good luck this year. I hope the weather is great for your Christmas Eve journey.
Thank you. I look forward to the ride that night. We can't seem to get NPR up here for some reason, so I enjoy tuning into Car Talk and the Prairie Home Companion on my headphones as I fly from Maine across to California.
Now, please tell all your friends at Verizon and all your Enlighten Me readers to have a joyous holiday season and wondrous New Year! And, if we could get a few books under the tree for the kids and the grown-ups–along with all the pogo sticks, the hats and gloves, and flat screen TVs–that would please me immensely!
And I heard him exclaim as I walked out of sight-
"Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night."
SANTA'S SUGERY SNICKER-DOODLES
INGREDIENTS:
2 sticks of soft reindeer butter-if not available 2 sticks of cow butter will do.
2 hen's eggs
2 cups of white sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla–and dap a tich behind both ears you'll smell good all day.
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of baking soda
3 cups of flour
For cinnamon sugar topping:
2 tablespoons of cinnamon
1 cup of sugar
Decorative toppings: jimmies, colored sugars and sprinkles
DIRECTIONS:
- In a large bowel, cream butter and sugar.
- Add the vanilla to butter and sugar mixture and stir well.
- Add salt, baking soda, and flour and stir until your arm aches and it's all blended. (I always have a few elfsters help me make the cookies. They're great stirrers!)
- Cover your bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate the dough for an hour.
MAKING COOKIES-the fun part! A child's, or elfster's, help is essential!
- Roll out the dough on a floured surface to cookie thickness.
- Cut cookies with wonderful cookie cutters- I especially recommend Santa cookie cutters.
- Sprinkle first with cinnamon sugar* mix.
- Then, add decorative toppings of your choice.
* the cinnamon sugar is the secret ingredient that changes mere sugar cookies into snicker-doodles!
Best eaten while listening to a good story!
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PTA 
