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Codename: Santa's Little Helper
You know how I am about name generators! Click here to find one tailor-made for the holiday season. Plug in your name, and out pops your official Christmas Elf handle. Imaginary little people—just one more reason why Christmas is more fun than Hanukkah. Just kidding! Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Delightful Kwanzaa, Stupendous Solstice, Fantastic Festival of Lights or Wondrous Whatever. Hey, don’t just applaud that sentiment…send money! And when you do, be sure to address it to my elfin alter ego, Sparky Snicklifigus.
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One of the sweetest things my husband K— ever did for me was inspired by our first Christmas together. The relationship was new, and we were starting off in every sense. We moved into our house late in October. Preoccupied with getting settled, we didn’t give a thought to Christmas. Suddenly, December 25 was almost upon us. Only then did we start to feel a need to decorate our new abode for the holiday.
Because of youth and poverty, neither of us had decorations from previous years or relationships. After all, you don’t collect Christmas ornaments when you’re living in your parents’ house or when you’re one misstep away from living out of your car. But things were looking up, financially speaking, and the house we’d moved into had a vaulted ceiling that just begged for a soaring Christmas tree. So, against all reason, we bought a 12-foot balsam fir.
It was the biggest Christmas tree I’d ever seen in person. We got it all the way home laced to the top of a sub-compact car half its length—driving down the street we must have looked something like the mythical turtle bearing the world on its back—lugged it up a flight of stairs and installed it in the otherwise bare living room before it occurred to us that we had no idea how we’d decorate it. We didn’t have so much as one red bow to call our own. “Oh well,” I thought, “the tree alone is enough.” But K—, who hadn’t yet been christened Sir Spendalot but was working on earning the sobriquet, never let a little thing like lack of money get in his way, and for once I was glad of it.
One evening just before Christmas I came home from work to find the house dark except for the porch light. That was a little odd since K—’s car was in the driveway. I approached the door, and just as I was about to turn the knob, K— opened it from the inside. He said, “I have a surprise for you; you have to close your eyes.” I obeyed (the first and last time I did that, probably), and he took me by the hand to lead me into the house. I knew from the turns we took that he was taking me to the tree, but I still didn’t suspect what he was up to.
He flicked a light switch and cried out in a voice filled with barely contained excitement, “Open your eyes!” I blinked in the sudden light and saw a large box on the floor in front of the tree. Out of it snaked a garland of gold tinsel that climbed up into the tree and lay draped there, inviting someone to continue hanging it. Miniature wooden ladders scaled the branches in a comically haphazard way, and on them, elves sporting red stocking caps sat grasping tiny Christmas packages. The box was filled with more decorations. It was like something out of a 1930s movie so wholesome you’d let your kids watch it, only they wouldn’t want to. He’d done this all by himself in order to please me. I was absolutely charmed.
Despite the hopeful romance of their arrival, those elves had a rough start in our household. Their first couple of years in our possession, we had two young cats in our family. They developed a liking for the merry little vinyl dolls that bordered on obsession. After a few episodes of elf mauling, we began elaborately mooring the elves to the tree using twist ties, wire, holiday ribbon, rubber bands, ornament hangers—whatever was at hand. I felt guiltily perverse tethering elves to branches like Snidely Whiplash roping Dudley Do-Right down on a log inching its way toward an inevitable rendezvous with a saw blade. In those years we could never take a photograph of our Christmas tree because one of them would undoubtedly have found its way into the hands of some FBI anti-pornography division and a man in a brown polyester suit would have come knocking at our door before you could say “seven maids a-milking.”
Anyhow, one December night I remember half-waking from a deep sleep and hearing the jingle of little bells coming from the living room. Far from suspecting that St. Nick had arrived, I knew that meant that one of the cats had managed to sever the Gordian knot of riggings that formed the first and only line of elfin defense and extract one of Santa’s little helpers for torture. But I was so far gone I just fell back asleep.
In the morning I awoke and, recalling the memory, wondered if I’d dreamt it. Descending the stairs to the living room, I came upon a scene of elfin holocaust. There were elves scattered everywhere, some face down, one with its cheery scarlet short pants pulled down around its ankles disturbingly, others missing a bootie or a mitten, a couple of them savagely scalped. That very day our population of little folk underwent facial and wardrobe reconstruction (giving a whole new meaning to the term “plastic” surgery), relocated to loftier regions, and was never found on the lower three feet of a tree again.
Despite (or perhaps because of) the years that have passed since an elf was glimpsed at a sub-alpine altitude, I’ll occasionally enter our living room in December to find a cat with only its hind feet on the floor, stretched full length up one of those toy ladders, hungrily eying the unbearably out-of-reach elves. The elves, I imagine, are jeering down at the cat in silent elfin language (audible only to felines), uttering the most humiliating taunts. Our Christmas trees look as though they were decorated by a race of giants who find it difficult to bend down too far, but at least we can take photos of them again without fearing a raid somewhere down the line.
The night K— first brought our elves home from the store, they probably hoped they were destined for a new life in a household with doting children and nothing more threatening than a slobbering Pomeranian. The reality of their tenure with us illustrates a useful Christmas lesson. What could be a nice little wintertime festivity often ends up making people feel hijacked, mauled and left for dead, or at least mugged. It is possible to take the season back, although it takes a little effort. The elves, I suspect, would recommend that you ignore the ravenous carnivores and retreat to your safe zone, which, in my case at least, isn’t in the local mall.
So, to the elves, my husband K—, and even the ravenous carnivores otherwise known as our pussycats, I’d like to say, “Thanks for the Christmas memories.” Hopefully we’ll all get to make many more...maybe even some that don’t involve bondage.
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