HOW CHRISSY SAVED CHRISTMAS
It was December at the North Pole and, as usual, Christmas preparations were in full
swing. Santa Claus and the elves were very busy. The sleigh reindeer were already
arguing again about who did the most work, Rudolph, the leader, was telling everyone
about the time his red nose had rescued Christmas and was also spending hours in front
of the mirror checking his appearance. Santa was running around like a maniac, tripping
over toys, comparing lists, complaining about some of the strange things kids wanted
and demanding to know where he could get them.
Nobody had time for a young reindeer called Chrissy, who was a bit fat and rather
lonely. The others never really noticed him and he always got the horrible jobs at
Christmas, such as wrapping 600 million presents! He didn't want to do that again
this year and so he put on his inline skates and dashed off before anyone could give him a
rotten job.
Chrissy hated Christmas. He couldn't stand all the hard work and shouting and Christmas
food and bad tempers. He wanted to get away, to do something really different! Nobody
would even notice that he wasn't there, after all, he wasn't in Santa's sleigh team (the "A" team, as they called themselves) in fact, he couldn't even really fly!
Every time he took off, he rose just high enough to fly over Santa's house and then
landed, huffing and puffing, in the back garden. Once he had done that and landed
right on Santa, who had just been having a quick bottle of beer before lunch. Santa had not
been too pleased!
Chrissy bought a copy of the North Pole Times, which was of course
full of Christmas stories. Turning to the music pages, he suddenly saw that the Spice
Girls were doing a Christmas charity gig! The Spice Girls! His favourites! Without
even thinking, he dashed off to the airport and bought a ticket.
Two days later he
was at Trafalgar Square with thousands of other tourists. It wasn't very different
from home, he thought, but at least it was a bit warmer. He skated down to the Albert Hall,
where the Girls were playing.
The queue was endless, finally he got to the door and held out his ticket. "Sorry
mate," said the man, "no animals allowed in here, especially not on skates". Chrissy
was horrified, "but I've come all the way from the North Pole" he protested. "Sorry"
the man said, "it's regulations".
Chrissy was so unhappy that he went to a burger bar and ate 75 double whopper cheeseburgers!
After that, he went back to the Albert Hall, the concert had started and he could
just hear the Girls singing. Suddenly he heard a young girl crying.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
"I've come all the way from the Continent to see the Spice Girls
and now I've lost my ticket" she sobbed. "All my friends are in there and they've
left me here outside." "Don't worry" said Chrissy, "they won't let me in because
I'm an animal on inline skates, you can have my ticket. Here you are."
He gave her his ticket."Hey,
danke, er, thanks," she said. "Here, have this in exchange." "What is it?" he asked.
"It's a ticket to a huge amusement park" she replied. "It's great, I've been there twice already. After you've been there, come and visit me for Christmas. Here's
my address."
She quickly wrote her address on a piece of paper and gave it to him,
then she smiled and ran off into the Hall.
Chrissy looked at the ticket, there was a picture of Mickey Mouse on it. He
jumped up and skated away. After buying a map of Europe, he knew how to get to the
park. So off he went after quickly eating another 50 cheeseburgers.
Soon he had reached the coast, then he had to skate through a large black tube with
a train behind him and other trains passing him in the other direction. (Nobody believed the drivers' stories later...) Finally he got out into open countryside and found the park. It was great! He met Mickey, Goofy, Aladdin and lots of other favourites and
went on every ride where the queue wasn't too long. Some of the people there couldn't
speak much English and he realised that his French wasn't very good, but it was all
great fun. Some even asked him who he was and seemed very impressed when he told them
that he was one of Santa's reindeer. This made him feel so proud that he went off
and ate 100 extra-grande cheeseburgers and drank two litres of red wine. After that
he had to lie down for a bit.
When he awoke he remembered the girl who had given him the ticket. He decided to visit
her. He even felt like buying her a Christmas present! So he bought 50 mega-triple-whopper
cheeseburgers for her. "She'll love these", he thought to himself, sniffing the delicious smell coming out of the bag.
Off he skated with his bag of burgers. Soon he was in her country. It was a long journey
and he began to get a bit hungry. "I'm sure she won't mind if I eat one or two" he
said to himself and ate 10 burgers. "Hmmm, they're getting cold, perhaps she won't like
them any more by the time I've arrived." He got so worried about the burgers that
he finally ate the last one half an hour before arriving at the girl's house.
She opened the door and was very surprised to see him. From inside the flat came voices
arguing about presents, the tree, the decorations, how many visitors they could put
up, the cooking, the shopping, the organising...... "That's mum and dad" the girl
said, "it's the same every Christmas, but you can come in if you want". Just then
the arguing got louder. Chrissy's heart sank. It seemed that he just couldn't escape.
He thanked the girl and said goodbye.
He had to think. He sat down and looked at the map. His journey had taken him north.
Suddenly he remembered his cousin Benny the Byte, the world's only reindeer computer
freak. Benny did nothing but tinker with his 2500 PCs. He would surely be the one
reindeer who wouldn't even notice Christmas, let alone take part! The best thing was
that he didn't live very far away, in the country across the border. Chrissy skated
off again, finally sure he knew where to escape from Christmas once and for all.
It had been a while since he'd eaten and after crossing the border Chrissy's hunger
began to grow again. Skating through a small town, he suddenly noticed bowls standing
outside many front doors. Next to the bowls were sheets of paper with writing on
them, but he ignored these. He carefully sniffed at the bowls, what was in them smelled
like ......rice pudding! He tasted some, it WAS rice pudding, mmmmmh, delicious!
"Wow, this country's great", said Chrissy to himself, eating bowl after bowl all
over the country until there wasn't a single full one left anywhere. After that he was a bit tired, so
he lay down for a nap.
He woke up and went off to find Benny. He arrived about 2 hours later. Benny's
place was full of computers and Chrissy was shocked to see Santa's face glaring out
of about 500 monitors! It was chaos! Benny was leaping around, swearing, shouting
and typing furiously.
"Hallo Benny" said Chrissy a little uncertainly. "How's things?"
"Rice pudding" snarled Benny, "kids' wishes not getting through, servers not serving, providers not providing, scanners failing,
software crashing, THAT'S THINGS, COUSIN, what d'you want?
"
"What's happened?" was
all Chrissy could say.
Benny glared, "I'll tell you what's happened," he said grimly. "Some
thieving idiot has eaten all the Nissen's rice pudding and now they've gone on strike.
They're not taking the kids' Christmas lists to Santa. So he's ordered me to scan
them and email them to him . I've got 5,000 people out there, trying to scan and mail
every list in this country but it's just too slow, TOO SLOW, d'you understand?" He
calmed down and looked at Chrissy. "There's going to be a lot of very disappointed
kids soon" he said quietly. "If I could get my hooves on the swine who ate the Nissens'
pudding.................."
Chrissy felt his heart slowly sinking, down to his stomach, onto the floor, through
the floor and down, down, down to a point deep in the dark, frozen winter earth.
He couldn't move for horror. So that's what those bits of paper by the pudding bowls
had been! Kids' Christmas wishes!
Benny was already busy again. Chrissy turned and silently skated away. He had never
liked Christmas, and now he hated himself. He had ruined Christmas for thousands
and thousands of kids, just because of his empty stomach! What could he do to make
things better?! He went to a snack bar and ordered 150 mega-cheeseburgers. Outside the bar
was a big plastic sack for putting rubbish in. It was empty. Suddenly he had an idea.
He could race around the country, collect the kids' lists and take them straight
to Santa at the North Pole! He would have to work fast, but it was the only way!
He raced out of the snack bar, with showers of sparks shooting from the wheels of
his skates. With the sack firmly between his teeth, he worked for hours and hours,
going to every town, village and house in the country and picking up the lists. The
number of houses seemed endless, far more than just a few hours before, when he'd gone round
eating the rice pudding...
Finally, in the frosty stillness of the night, he was finished.
The sack bulged with lists and it weighed quite a lot too. Chrissy realised he was tired and a little hungry too....... But for once he wasn't interested in food.
He had no time for it. Santa had to get the lists before morning, but it was such
a long way to the North Pole! He would have to........fly! Despair seized him, he
couldn't fly! He remembered the time he'd landed on Santa. "You'll never make the sleigh team"
Santa had shouted at him in anger.
Chrissy sat down, at that moment he was the loneliest and saddest reindeer in the
world. He didn't even notice the elegant young black-haired woman landing next to
him on a flying broomstick.
"What's the matter?" she asked with an Italian accent.
Chrissy told her the whole story. "So what's the problem? You fly to Santa now with the lists"
she said.
"I can't fly properly" Chrissy confessed slowly. "
Nonsense" replied the
woman,
"you are one of Santa's reindeer, of course you can fly. She looked at him critically. "Perhaps it would
help a bit if you ate fewer cheeseburgers." She remarked.
"Why don't you
do it?" asked Chrissy, "You can fly really well".
"Huh!" she answered, "It's not
my job, I do a different route and my big day isn't till the 6th of January anyway.
There'd be awful trouble with the unions and the Nissen".
"I can't fly, everything's ruined."
"Don't talk molto nonsense. Of course you can
fly."
"Can't" "Can" "Can't" "Can" "Can't" "WILL!"
So saying, she pulled out a slim
magic wand and waved it over Chrissy's head. He went dizzy for a moment and closed
his eyes. When he opened them again, he found he was 300 metres above the ground and falling!
Below him the witch shouted words of encouragement: "Avanti, Chrissy, get your skates
on, and give my love to Santa!
" Chrissy felt very nervous, the ground was coming
closer and closer. Suddenly the witch shot up past him on her broomstick. "Come on,
fatty" she laughed.
That did it. Chrissy kicked out with his hind legs and suddenly he too shot up through
the cold night air. Higher and higher he climbed with the heavy sack in his mouth
swinging from side to side. He was amazed. He was flying, really flying! Just like
Rudolph, Donner, Blitzen and all the others from the A team!! In less than half an hour
he was at the North Pole, where Santa and the elves were working frantically. Santa
himself was pacing round and around, bellowing into a mobile. He had worn such a
deep hole in the ice that only his big red cap was above ground!
Chrissy landed, a little
clumsily, and trotted over to Santa, who as usual hadn't even noticed him.
"Tell
them I'll give them double overtime and 3 million tonnes of rice pudding" he was
shouting into the phone, "that's my final offer!" His cheeks were red with rage and even his
costume seemed to be an angry crimson. He looked up and saw Chrissy. "What d'you
want?" he bellowed.
"I've brought those kids' Christmas lists, you know, the ones
the Nissen usually leave at the depot." Chrissy tried to sound cool.
"Have you now?" said Santa, slowly and threateningly whilst staring up at him from
his deep hole in the ice, "Have you now, my four-legged young friend? May I assume
that they are in that blue plastic sack by your front left hoof?"
"Er, yes", replied
Chrissy, hoping desperately that nothing would go wrong again. "In that case" said Santa,
glaring wildly at him, "LET'S JUST TAKE A DAMN GOOD LOOK AT THEM, AND IF YOU HAPPEN
TO BE PLAYING A JOKE ON ME, MY MOSS-MUNCHING COLLEAGUE, I'LL..............."
Chrissy
thought it better not to tell him that he'd never eaten moss in his whole life, owing
to his love of cheeseburgers.
Santa jumped out of the hole and kicked the plastic sack over, thousands of Christmas
letters to him poured out onto the ice. He snatched the nearest ones and began reading.
"These ARE the Christmas lists" he shouted in astonishment. "We're saved, hurrah! Chrissy's saved Christmas!" "Hurrah" he roared again and ran off to tell everyone
the good news.
Five minutes later everyone was dancing around Chrissy, admiring his antlers, patting
him on the back and telling him he'd always been their best friend.............
Finally Santa signalled for the celebrating to stop. "You know, Chrissy", he said,
"normally I don't give presents to team members. But as you've saved Christmas for
hundreds of thousands of kids, I'm giving you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to
ask for anything you want!"
Chrissy felt rather guilty, after all, he was the one who'd eaten the rice pudding
in the first place! Now that he could fly properly, he didn't really want aynthing
else, anyway.
Finally he said "I'd like a really cool baseball cap, with a picture of a witch on
a broomstick on it". A cool idea, he thought, no-one else had a cap like that.
Santa beamed at him. "Well, thank goodness he doesn't want a new modem. Everybody
wants new modems! he boomed. He trudged off across the ice to his huge warehouse,
with a proud but rather sleepy young reindeer trotting behind him.
By the way, Chrissy would just like me to say that if you ever run into Benny the
Byte, please, PLEASE don't tell him what you know.....................
Did you have trouble understanding some of Chrissy's big story? Read about fascinating
«Xmas customs in Euroland«.
Daniel Aire
© 2000, Francopolis. Tous droits réservés.