Have yourself an analog Christmas

by David Benjamin

“He sees you when you’re sleeping

“And he knows when you’re awake.

“He knows if you’ve been bad…”

— J. Fred Coots & Haven Gillespie

 

NORTH POLE — Santa Claus punched his intercom for the fourth time, a moment of frustration that had reduced his jollity to the point of wiping the dimples off his face. Even when Poodgy, Head Elf of the North Pole, stepped into his office, the exasperated Santa could barely crack a smile.

“Where on earth is Boopsy,” said Santa, referring his elfin assistant. Boopsy was normally the epitome of efficiency (besides being cute as a bug’s ear).

“Gone,” said Poodgy, “where all the good elves go.”

Santa scowled. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

Poodgy showed a glimmer of perplexity. “Santa, you didn’t get the email?”

Santa sighed. “Poodgy, c’mon! Santa Claus doesn’t do email.”

“Right, I keep forgetting,” said the elf, with a note of pity. “You’re totally analog.”

“I’m what?”

Poodgy pressed on. “I thought you knew, Santa.”

“Knew what?”

“They’re gone.”

“What are gone?”

“Your elves. They’re gone, all of them, except for me, of course. I’m serving in a sort of interim caretaker—“

“GONE?” No jollity remained in Santa’s disposition. A glint in his eye and a twist of his head gave Poodgy to know he had something to dread. Saint Nick held the stump of a pipe so tight in his teeth that it snapped in two. He stood up and bashed his desktop. Poodgy could not remember Santa being angry. 

“Where the hell did the little slackers go?” he bellowed.

Biding for time, Poodgy took out his iPhone 14 and tapped the screen several times. “Ah, here,” he said, keeping his eyes lowered. “Tucson. A place called Tinytoon Village.”

“Tucson?” Santa roared. “What in God’s name are my elves doing in Ariz—“

“Redundant, sir.”

“Redundant?”

“Downsized.”

“Downsized? We’re talkin’ elves, for Pete’s sake! Weren’t they short enough already?”

“I mean fired, Santa.”

“Fired? You fired my elves? Without asking me? Why? How?”

“Well, sir. They all received a gold monogrammed cigarette lighter and a very nice severance—”

“You sent my elves to the desert? With Zippos?”

“Well, yes, we did, Santa. But it’a lovely facility—Tinytoon Village—designed uniquely to accommodate the, er … height-challenged. Dwarfs, elves, fairies, midgets, pygmies. I have the brochure right here.”

Santa turned with a jerk and took Poodgy by the throat. “Dammit, it’s Christmas! Get ‘em back here. We’ve got work to do here!”

“Oh no, sir. Forget it. They’re gone. There’s no bringing them back, not at this late date.”

“Late date? You’re damn right it’s a late date. Christmas is twenty goddamn days from now!”

“Yes, but, the elves, y’see, had to go. We did studies. They were, well, inefficient.”

“Studies? You did studies?!” Santa was livid. He pushed Poodgy away. “You’re an elf, Poodgy. Are you inefficient?”

“Well, Santa, I never thought—“

Poodgy was interrupted by Santa’s deafening cri de coeur. “I WANT MY ELVES!”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible, sir. Sorry. Bringing them back, my goodness, the logistics? Besides, that would be a huge breach in policy.”

“Policy? What policy? Firing my elves? Bibbsy and Goo-goo? Fancy-Pants and Squinchy? I love those little guys. They love me! Who made this stupid policy?”

“Well, sir, that would be the director of IT.”

Santa growled. “You keep talking in riddles, Poodgy. What the hell is eye tea.”

“Information technology.”

“Yeah, whatever that is. Another riddle,” said Santa, impatiently. “All right, Poodge, next dumb question: Who’s this director of Inflammation Technology?”

“Information,” Poodgy corrected, cautiously. “That would be your brother, sir.”

“My brother?!” roared Santa. “Bruno did this? That shiftless idiot? He’s the one who up and fired all my elves?”

“No, no, Santa. Not fired. Replaced. Upgraded, sir.”

“Reindeer manure!” said Santa. “Get out of my sight, you curly-toed twit. And send Bruno up here. Now!”

Gladly, Poodgy slunk from the room. Santa fumed and paced for ten minutes before his kid brother, Bruno, who had been—until just before Halloween—selling turquoise tie-clips and rebuilt slot machines out of a strip mall in Henderson, Nevada.

Instead of the standard Claus family uniform of red velvet with fur trim and shiny black boots, Bruno came in spiffed out in black pinstriped Armani with a red shirt, white tie, a paisley hankie in his breast pocket, and two-tone wingtips. 

Santa stared. “Bruno, you look like a pimp.”

Bruno ignored the crack, saying only, “Mornin’, Nick. How’s it hangin’?”

“Hanging? It’s hanging by the neck until dead. Christmas is coming and my elves are in the wind,” said Santa. “Apparently, thanks to you, moron!”

Bruno shook his head. “Elves, really, Nick? In this day and age?” said Bruno condescendingly. He pulled up a chair, took a seat and spent a minute lighting a panatella with a monogrammed cigarette lighter. 

Santa grew red with rage. His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry.

Finally, Bruno blew out a smoke ring and said, “Nick, this is the 21st century. look around. Nobody’s using manual labor anymore, except to pick tomatoes and flip burgers. You gotta think silicon, robotics, AI! Algorithms, brother, algorithms!”

Santa staggered to his desk and slumped in his chair, his little round belly shaking like a bowlful of jelly. “Algo …”

“Rithms,” said Bruno, leaning forward and flicking an ash. “Lemme show ya!”

With that, Bruno tapped his Apple watch. Santa’s door flew open, and a dozen shrouded figures marched—in perfect unison—into the office, crisply dressing right, snapping their heels and forming a straight line. They were all exactly three feet in height, covered in charcoal-gray robes with peaked hoods. If they had faces, they were not visible. Each wore rope sandals, from which protruded waxy toes that looked more plastic than flesh. They emitted a low hum, like an air-conditioner fan. 

“What in God’s name?”

“Algorithms, Nick,” said Bruno, proudly. “An army of ’em, at your service. Every one seemingly identical, but you’d be wrong! Each of these little beauties is embedded with a different code—one doing erector sets, another CoComelons or Madden NFL ’23, another doing Mario Brothers, another Squishmallows. Y’see that one on the end? All it does is Crazy Aaron’s Amazing Prediction Putty, and I have no idea what that means. And action figures! G.I. Joe, Wonder Woman, Stormy Daniels, you name it …”

“I knew it was mistake to hire you, Bruno,” said Santa. trying to peer into the eyes of an algorithm. “But Mrs. Claus kept saying, Nick, he’s gambling all night, he’s drinking. My wife, your sister-in-law, bless her heart, said you were hanging out with loose women. You could get VD, she said. Bring Bruno up here, she said. How could he screw up in the North Pole? There’s nowhere to go, nothin’ to do, nobody to talk to, except you, me, eight tiny reindeer—well, Rudolph makes nine—and a lot of elves …” 

Bruno wasn’t listening. He said, “Cookies! Do ya know about the cookies, Nick? That’s somethin’ else I’ve started here.”

“Cookies? You think you started cookies? Gimme a break, Bruno!” said Santa. “Every Christmas Eve, I’m up to here in cookies and milk. Oreos, snickerdoodles, Tollhouses, pfeffernusse, gingerbread … Oh, and y’know what I love? Those sugar cookies with the Hershey’s kisses sitting right on top … ”

“Wait, no, you don’t get it,” said Bruno, waxing technological. “I’m tallkin’ digital here—HTTP cookies, Nick. I’m talkin’ about the text files we’re using, everywhere, to monitor little kids’ website use.”

“Monitor little kids? Why would we want to—“

“C’mon, Nick, what’s our motto here? ‘Naughty or nice,’ right? And cookies are the answer—way better than whatever half-ass ad hoc system you’ve been using all these holidays to keep tabs on the sneaky brats,” Bruno enthused. “We can watch every move made by every computer-literate, game-playing, porn-seeking moznik on the face of the earth. We’ve got 24-hour surveillance, just waiting for kids to cry, pout, shout, bully, sext or deny the Holocaust. The little snots can’t get away from us. Best thing? They don’t know we’re there, peeking over their shoulder, waiting for ’em to trip and blow their Christmas morning.”

Santa went white.

Bruno went on. “In just two weeks, Nick, we’ve already upped our Naughty Demographic by 19.5 percent. Do you have any idea how this impacts our gross sleighload numbers? We’re gonna be hauling, lemme see here … ”

Bruno clicked away on his digital tablet. “Look at this!”

Bruno showed Santa his screen, on which the spreadsheet was too small for him to read without his wire-rimmed spectacles. “We’ll be cutting back on rooftop Christmas Eve deliveries by at least 143 metric tons. For you, Nick, that comes to 1,439 fewer slides down the chimney.”

“Cut back?” said Santa, bewildered. “Why would we want to cut back? I’m Santa Claus. This is the season of giving. The more the better. I like sliding down chimneys!”

“Oh, c’mon,” said Bruno.”All that soot and creosote. It’s gonna kill ya, Nick!”

Santa leaned forward. “Bruno, listen. I don’t really give a shit whether a kid behaved or not. It’s Christmas! All is forgiven.”

“Hey, nice attitude, Nick, but that’s 20th-century thinking! We can’t afford to just fling out presents to every Tom, Dick and Mary with an Advent calendar and a Christmas tree. Besides, we’ve already launched the program, It’s in the system, baked in. Cookies rule! Any kid who pouts, shouts, cries or sets fire to the kitty, well, that’s tough titty. He ain’t gettin’ nuttin’ for Christmas.”

“Nuttin’?” asked Santa, looking distressed.

But Bruno was out the door, his herd of little algorithms tagging along behind him.

Problems began to show up the next day. 

For the first time in his career, Santa Claus switched on his personal computer and started reading the daily production numbers and inventory tallies. He noticed glitches. Instead of getting a Malibu Barbie, a little girl in St. Paul was slated to receive a marble rye and a rolled of galvanized barbed wire. There was a kid in Atlanta named Stevie who wanted a toy fire truck but he was going to get, instead, a nine-liter, foam-loaded, high-power fire extinguisher. A toddler in Tulsa who asked for a tricycle was going to receive instead a replica triptych of Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. Bobby Shaftoe, a ten-year-old in Indiana who had asked Santa for a Red Ryder BB gun, was going to find, under the tree, a .45 caliber semi-automatic Ruger handgun, accompanied by a stocking full of hollow-point ammo. Fourteen thousand boys and girls who scribbled “Legos” on their wish-lists were going to get Leggs pantyhose in egg-shaped packages, in various sizes and shades.

Santa called Bruno to his office, and showed him a printout revealing all these algorithmic anomalies. 

Bruno, flanked by two of his spooky little algo-gnomes, waved off Santa’s concerns. “Hey, Nick, yo, no system is perfect, ya dig?” he said. “A bit flip here, an overload there. No big deal. Right now, on our maiden digital voyage here, we’re lookin’ at right-gift/right kid ratio that’s better than seven-to-three.”

“You mean,” said Santa, “that a third of my friends in Little Girl and Boy Land are gonna get Christmas presents they won’t want?”

“C’mon, man, that’s Christmas!” said Bruno. “Remember that bunny suit that Ralphie got from Aunt Clara? Remember what Mick Jagger said: ‘You can’t always get what you want.’”

Maybe it was the invocation of Mick Jagger that shattered Santa’s poise. He dug through a pile of Christmas gifts, found Bobby Shaftoe’s Ruger .45 and pumped three rounds into the nearest algorithm. Instead of bleeding, the little freak disintegrated into a clutter of 1’s, 0’s and plastic toes. 

“Oh my God!” cried Bruno. “The humanity.”

“You’re next,” said Santa, fitting the gun barrel up Bruno’s left nostril, “unless you can fix every one of these screwed-up Christmas wishes!”

“Now?” said Bruno, somewhat nasally. 

“Yeah,” said Santa. “Today.”

“Jeez, Nick, I don’ know,” replied Bruno, sucking his teeth. “Sure, I can send our faulty units to the shop—”

“What shop?”

“The shop. Where they re-code bad algorithms.”

“Naughty algo-somethings?”

“Naughty? Yeah, nice one, Nick.”

“Where’s this shop?”

“Sunnyvale.”

“California?” 

“Yeah, Nick, but listen,” said Bruno, staring cross-eyed at Santa’s gun. “Trouble is, y’know, chances are, what with the backload, the holidays and all? These suckers ain’t gonna be outa the shop ’til, like, April.”

“April? Christmas in April?”

“Better late than never, Nick.”

“That does it! Bruno, you’re fired!” said Santa. For good measure. he sprayed his good-for-nothing brother in the face with the full nine-liter load from Stevie’s fire extinguisher.

Five minutes later, Santa had Poodgy back on the carpet and Boopsy on the phone. 

“Hey, sweetie, how are things in Arizona?”

“Hot, man. Hot!” said Boopsy. “And everybody here is old!”

“Well then, come on home!”

“Really?”

Within 48 hours, Santa had rounded up an entire herd of flying reindeer, plus a few caribou and one aerodynamic team of musk oxen. He dispatched more than as hundred sleighs to Tinytoon Village, where Poodgy happily liberated every one of Santa’s exiled elves. Along the way, Poodgy dropped Bruno off in the desert and told him to find his own goddamn way back to Vegas. 

Three days later, Boopsy was making Santa’s list and checking it twice—by hand. Santa’s toy shop was humming. Led by Squinchy, he elves were singing “Joy to the World” and “Frosty the Snowman” in four-part harmony. Vixen, Blitzen and the rest of the reindeer were fortifying themselves with carbs and sugar plums. Rudolph, who was secretly tech-savvy, was fitting himself with an LED nose and plugging his septum into a charger.

As for the algorithms, they were tossed out into the snow until their synapses froze and their little red lights cease to blink. After that, the elves stripped them down, fluffed them up in the dryer, added a hint of fragrance and used them to stuff teddy bears and toboggan cushions.