Christmas Wi-Fi – A Christmas Short Story
Our first Christmas gift of the season for you to unwrap is our whimsical story Christmas Wi-Fi. We hope you enjoy this tale of Santa and his very busy Elves.
Many times, terms have double meanings, such as bowl. It can be a dish, or the act of rolling a ball towards wooden pins. It’s the same way at the North Pole, where the word WiFi means something besides wireless fidelity.
Originally it was called Why and Find Out, but over a couple of hundred years it got shortened to WiFi. It’s the method by which Santa has the Elves to know what toys to make children. You see, Santa just knows when he sees a child what toy to make, but the Elves need a list.
Even they couldn’t ride in the sleigh and make all the toys in one night. They have to prepare a year in advance. Santa makes toys, but there are so many children in the world, he needed help. This is where the Elves, and the List comes in.
One Christmas many years ago, Santa was delivering the toys he had made to an old house. The only way in was a chimney, the lady who lived in the house made sure every window was tightly closed. That’s where he first met the Christmas Elves.
Of course, they were not Christmas Elves then, they were Chimney Elves. A Chimney Sweep can’t do it all, so years ago, families of Elves took up residence in the bricks of chimneys. To help the Chimney Sweeps keep the Chimneys clean. Before that they were Roof Elves, but that’s another story entirely.
You can imagine how disturbing it can be for an entire town of Chimney Elves. To be awakened in the night, by a large man in a red and white suit scaling down the outside of your house. Most people, even Chimney Sweeps had forgotten they were there years ago, but Santa was different.
“Hello Chimney Elves, I’m so sorry to disturb you, but I had to find a way to deliver these. The Chimney Elves eyes filled with wonder when they saw the toys. They began to ask questions, so many that Santa spent about 20 minutes holding to the rope.
“I tell you what, why don’t you all make a visit at the North Pole the day after Christmas, and I’ll show you around.” The Elves loved the idea, but asked how they would get there. Santa handed them one of his Santa Keys. “With this, you can unlock a door to the North Pole. Simply place it near something, and the keyhole will appear, even a brick.”
On that December 26, the whole Chimney Elf town, used the key and entered the brick size door. An average Chimney Elf town was over one thousand Elves. Santa showed them all the entire workshop.
From Soot, the oldest and wisest Elf, to Brick the youngest Elf, a baby of 200, were amazed. They asked Santa how he made the toys, and he showed them. Spot tried to copy a toy drum, and produced one almost instantly.
Even Santa was amazed at how quickly he, and all the Elves could make toys. With a hearty Ho Ho Ho, Santa had an idea. “How would you all like to help me make toys for Christmas? The number of children in the world continues to grow, and this would help me make toys for more children.”
They agreed, and the first Christmas Elves began. For several Christmases, they would leave their town each day and work to build toys. As the years increased, they reached out to other Chimney Elf towns. Over time, many Christmas Elves realized they could do more as Christmas Elves, than Chimney Elves.
Chimney Sweeps, and Chimneys continued to improve, and they were no longer needed to maintain Chimneys. That doesn’t mean their Chimney story was over though. That’s where the Why and Find, later WiFi was born.
Santa is a busy man, and he works on several Christmas projects each year. It became easier for the Elves, rather than reading off a list to Santa to see, they would find out for themselves. They would use their old Chimney towns to stay a few days, write things down, and hop back to the North Pole.
Unless of course, they lost the key. One Elf, Brick, lost his and was gone for three months. He was so embarrassed he blushed for a week when he got home. They took to calling him Brick Red after that, and he liked it, having been a Chimney Elf for awhile.
This started the practice of hiding a spare Santa Key in a brick in each Chimney. For those houses without a chimney, this was a problem. How would the Elves get in? Where would they stay? When they were gone, would someone find they had been there?
Chisel, a rather inventive Elf, came up with the solution. It was such a good one, that Santa started using it. He uses it to this day. Chisel invented a wooden box about the size of a spec of dust. Santa would leave one on every roof he visited.
When you open it, it would create an invisible Chimney and fireplace that opened up into the houses. This is how the Elves visit places with no Chimneys of their own. After another embarrassing incident involving Santa and an Attic skylight, Brick Red suggested he start using the spec boxes.
It was a wonderful idea. What started out as Soot saying, “Why this toy should go to this child?”, and, “Find out what else they want.”, became a network that served all of Christmas Town. This included Santa being able to gift gifts, not only to children, but the animals as well.
Now, every mouse hole, bear cave, and badger’s den received a toy for Christmas. There was so much work, they had to not only recruit all other Chimney Elves, they reached out to several attic, zoo, and kitchen Elves. They even hired on a a couple of Gnome tribes from Alaska, but they ended up taking care of the reindeer.
The Elves loved their job, but one thing upset many of them. That was seeing a child’s favorite toy broken a few days before. This led the WiFi Network to expand again, adding the Misfit Toy Repair Crew.
Elves can’t repair every toy, that would keep them too busy. However, many toys were repaired by Elves, without a child ever realizing it was broken. They loved doing anything they could, to keep a child from being sad.
This grew to include an Elf postal service that collected all the letters to Santa every year. Some Elves became mechanics to keep Santa’s sleigh working. Caliber stashed a spare sleigh or two, in different corners of the world as a precaution.
This came in handy more times than you can imagine. Metal sleighs attract lightning, get busted up, and scraping billboards. That led to Paste and his brother Polish traveling with Saint Nicholas every Christmas to repair the loose damage of a reindeer hoof or sleigh rail.
The Elves became so busy that, Santa had to hire a few human helpers for odds and ends. This is why there are Santa’s helpers in every department store. Elves were far too busy helping Santa, to dress up like him.
One year, Santa decided that the Elves were so busy, they needed a vacation, two weeks off. Door asked, “How could the Elves take a vacation, we’re busy morning to midnight.” Santa laughed and said that was exactly why.
“You don’t have to all take a break at the same time Soot. There so many of you, you can rotate, 8,000 of you at a time can take a vacation. You’ll Find out it’s good for you Soot.”
As usual Santa was right. When March finally came, and it was Soot’s turn, he went to Scotland. There Soot saw something wonderful, a thing he had ever seen before. Even after years of being a Christmas Elf, he never remembered seeing it.
Soot was so excited, he had an idea. It’s said that Elves get 15 seconds by themselves. There’s so many of us that we don’t know what loneliness is. Soot saw a child who was lonely and shy by the seashore. He watched as another child walked over, and made friends with him.
What amazed him was, he saw two other children start to go, but they were too shy. Soot realized that sometimes, friendship needs a little help. Who better to help than Christmas Elves?
Soot explained, “How many children do we know who are sad? They need some one in their lives, to give them a little push. This will help them beyond a toy at the end of the year. This can make a huge difference in their lives.”
Santa, and all the Elves, loved it. That’s how the Find A Friend Initiative was started. Soot realized, children need friends, and sometimes they need help making them.
Soot and his crew, in addition to finding out what toys children wanted, would also find out what they liked. Elves would work to connect kids in neighborhoods to make friends. Many a child didn’t know it, but an Elf had helped setup a lifelong friendship for them.
All of this brings me back to Santa, and his list. You’ve heard it say Santa’s making a list, and checking it twice? That’s only half right, the Elves made a list, Santa did check it twice though.
He checked that the toy elves had made the right toys. He checked that a child wasn’t missed. He checked the report from Caliber that all of the spec boxes were in good working order. He checked the reports of everyone from the Postal Elves to the Kite Flying Elves.
Kite Flying Elves are brave. They help try and keep kid’s kites air born for them. Kite Elves retire usually after 150 years, it’s dangerous work. They become Bakery Elves who help feed everyone in Christmas town. Santa checked their report too, including testing the new cookies each year.
This upset the Tailor Elves for a couple of hundred years, as Santa’s suit had to be let out a few inches through the century. That’s when Thimble invented Elastic long before whoever got the credit for making it. Until then Thimble and his brother Cookie didn’t speak much, but it was okay now.
Over time, plastic toys were added, later electronic, and even computerized toys. The Elves were brilliant with anything they tried, and a huge blessing to Santa. There was only one time where the Elves made a pretty bad mistake, and it was a big one.
The one thing that Chimney Elves were never good at, was dealing with fire. Traditionally Chimney Elves didn’t deal with fire. There was soot, ashes, smoke, and bricks. Fire was something Chimney Elves were taught to stay completely and totally away from.
You would also expect that, if anyone would not have a problem with a Chimney, it would be Santa. On top of it being Santa, he lives in a place surrounded by snow. Who would imagine a problem with Santa’s Chimney, but it happened.
The Chimney Elves had long since moved out of Santa’s Chimney, and into houses in Christmas town. This meant no one was around to notice the buildup on the inside of it. After all, Santa didn’t go down his Chimney, he used the door.
A blizzard hit about October one year, and ice fell through the Chimney, knocking a loose brick down into the fire, and out on the floor of the workshop. A young Elf, Hammer was close to it, and he panicked. Hammer picked up a toy shovel to toss it back into the fire.
It caught the plastic shovel on fire, which caused a frightened Hammer to drop it, onto the floor of the workshop. Six months of toys were burned in a matter of minutes. Thankfully the Reindeer Gnomes weren’t afraid of fire, and got it put out in about an hour.
This led to the North Pole Fire Department being formed. Fifteen Gnomes, two polar bears, and a Snowman as dispatcher. Hammer tried to sign up, because he felt bad, but Santa persuaded him to stick to toy building, he was a skilled toy maker.
So much so that, Santa helped turn the cause of the crisis, into one of its heroes. Hammer worked around the clock to replace the toys, with a large crew. In two weeks time, they had actually made double what had been lost.
Hammer did get to help with the fire department eventually. He helped to inspect Santa’s chimney twice a year. Also, the plastic toys were moved away from the fireplace, to the other side of the room.
Christmas Elves, Gnomes, animal, and eventually human helpers all make up Santa’s crew. Whether at the North Pole, a department store in New York, or a Chimney in South Carolina, they worked to make the holidays special.
Work doesn’t mean that it wasn’t fun, just that they didn’t leave it to chance. Christmas is special, because it’s Christmas, yet it has several helpers. Many aren’t Elves, or work for Santa, but they all have the same goal. To make a day we must never forget, unforgettable to every life it touches, with or without a Chimney.