Christmas Spirit is the Spirit of Community. We Need to Keep It Alive

Attn: North Pole HR Department

Dear Mr. Jonathan Frost,

Forgive my writing during the busy season, but there is an urgent matter that must be brought to your attention. After 60 years in the Wrapping Department, I have noticed a concerning trend – more disturbing than those hideous Furbys of the 1990s, more dangerous than lawn darts of the 1980s, and more baffling than the pet rocks of the 1970s. My colleagues work diligently, as always, but now without cheer or exuberance. Merry songs are no longer sung. Many elves can no longer afford cottages of their own, and must live in close, uncomfortable quarters. They come to work overtired and underpaid. The bells on our hats no longer jingle, and the egg in our nog tastes rotten. In short: we elves are losing our Christmas Spirit.

For years we all gathered every Sunday at Twixie Periwinkle’s grand cottage on the hill for hot cocoa and Christmas movies – and a merry jig, if we indulged too heavily in wassail. Now elves lazily prefer the solitude of their own cottages to reveling with others. If they do socialize, it’s only with those in their own department; a Wrapping elf won’t mix with an elf on the Innovation Team, and the elf on the Innovation Team rarely shares a candy cane with one in the Logistics Division. Last Sunday night I walked past Twixie’s cottage, and the windows were glaringly dark.

Across every continent, they revere us for being free from the ego and petty ambition that governs their own countries. There’s a reason they fantasize about us in picture books and movies, and dress up like us in holiday plays. Their world is complex, fraught with conflict and privation, while ours is simple, merry, and bright. Or it’s supposed to be. Now, instead of gathering in shared merriment, we volunteer to sit on shelves across the world, alone and silent, judging children like Soviet informants, and obsess over vain photos taken with our elfie sticks. Community is the essence of Christmas, but we’re forgetting that an elf without friends, without jolly company, might as well be a goblin.

One suggestion, which I offer humbly, is to place term limits on the Big Man — to keep our Christmas Spirit alive and fresh, and ensure new ideas are always flowing through our workshop. No one argues how effective he’s been in popularizing the Christmas tradition (and becoming an international celebrity in the process). But after 200 years, it’s time for a change. A five-term maximum, with elections every 10 years, is just the shake-up we need. Replacing the Big Man may sound like a radical reform, but sometimes radical reforms are necessary. Indeed, when the first elves ventured north to establish a civilization dedicated solely to producing Christmas presents, many thought their little experiment was too radical to succeed. Yet here we stand, 200 years later, presiding over the most impressive toy empire the world has ever known. If we can keep it.

We elves don’t do this work for the pay. A better living could be earned in the factories of Sweden, processing timber. We do it because we believe in Christmas Spirit, and in its power over all the evils of the world; over starvation and sickness, over war, intolerance, and greed; over loneliness. Christmas Spirit cannot itself cure these evils, but it can, for a few precious weeks, make them feel less oppressive.

We often believe, especially here in the North Pole, that Christmas Spirit is something we innately have. It’s not. It’s something we do. Something we must practice. If we don’t, it’ll burn out like the bulbs in our streetlamps. We owe it not only to ourselves, but to all the people of the world, to keep the lights on, and wake up every morning and choose community over self.

Humbly yours,

Phineas Humperdink
Wrapping Department