The Night Near Christmas, the Not-Elf, and the Nice List

Those who have grown up already sometimes forget how uncomfortable it is to be a child.

A few years in age makes a great difference in height; you see everything at the level of other people's waists. It can be a forest of bodies. Adults sometimes don't realize that what feels like stillness to them is a churning sea of hip-to-hip movement, through which you must pick your way, careful not to be punched in the shoulder by a careless knee. Crowds of adults are difficult.

Clothing is cumbersome, particularly in winter. There are multiple layers to put on, and all of these restrict your movement. Boots are waterproof and hard, and generally, mittens are attached through the sleeves of the coat with a string that can rub over your back in an irritating and perpetual way. Hats have a tendency to fall down over your eyes, and good luck to the child with the ability to raise a hand to the eyes when rolled in a puffy coat. Tactile blackout is complete. The horrors of a small bladder coupled with interminable layers of heavy clothing with difficult fasteners--not to be imagined.

A child is a perpetual parcel, something to be lugged about from here to there. Interested in something? A tug on your arm will take you away faster than you can raise a protest. See a friend of similar height along the way? Say hello with a quick look before being herded to wherever the adults want you to go. Vocal protest, well... whining children are not met with much tolerance, even if their complaints are justified.

On a cold winter's evening, Sarah Williams was highly aware of her discomfort and felt justified in her indignation at the crowd around her, the clothing on her body, and her parents who were indeed dragging her around like a dog on a leash--even if she did not, as yet, have the vocabulary to express her indignation.

Still, there was plenty to see as her mother tugged her along through the crowded main square of their little town. All the streetlights were decorated with large red and gold lanterns. Lights festooned the skeletons of decorative trees. Somewhere ahead a drums thumped and tubas farted out Christmas songs. Cold air kills smell, but there was also a distinct odor of car exhaust, caramel apples, hot cider, and the straw which had been spread on the bare ground of the town park to keep the icy mud from churning up on pedestrian boots.

"Look, Sarah!" said her father. And he gathered her up and lifted her onto his shoulders. "There's the Christmas tree!"

She clasped her arms around her father's head and looked and looked her fill. There was the tree, indeed, glowing with all the colors of the rainbow, full of ribbons and baubles and glitter, and at the top, a star so bright it was almost painful to gaze on for more than a few minutes. She took advantage of her position to scan the crowd, looking over the tops of hatted heads. She saw smoke rising here and there, full of delicious sweets and spices. She saw the band under the gazebo, resplendent in fancy red jackets. And she saw...

"Santa Claus!" Sarah shrieked, pointing. "Santa Claus!"

The man himself, King of the childhood pantheon of gods, dispenser of toys and maker of lists, Santa Claus sat on a golden throne near the tree. His big bushy beard covered his chest and his red cap was laced with a wreath of holly.

"That's right, sweetie. We're going to see Santa Claus." He jogged his daughter up and down on his shoulders to hear her laugh, then let her slide down his back with a final bounce.

"Robert, she's too big for that," said Linda pertly, smoothing down the fur collar of her winter coat. "Sarah's almost eight, she doesn't need to sit on some stranger's lap."

Robert gave his wife a quick glare and then, expression changed, looked down at his daughter. "Santa Claus isn't a stranger. Now look, Sarah, we're going to stand in line and wait our turn very patiently, and when we're done, we'll have some hot cider and hear the choir sing."

"I need to meet with the performers," said Linda impatiently. "I can't wait with you. Will you take her?"

"Linda..." said Robert, "This is supposed to be a family night."

"I don't have the advantage of being an upstanding member of the Chamber of Commerce," said Linda tartly. "This troupe has performed in London and New York. I've pulled a lot of strings to bring them to this pokey Connecticut backwater, and I need to ingratiate. Please, Robert. Be a sport." She kissed him, on the cheek, then gave Sarah a quick pat on the head to remind the child of her presence, and was gone in the crowd.

"What's 'ingratiate,'" asked Sarah, looking up at her dad.

Robert sighed, herding his daughter along to where the line for Santa stretched around the town square. "It's like with Santa Claus, sweetie. He keeps a list of the nice children and the naughty ones. And naughty ones need to do extra things to get off the naughty list and onto the nice list. 'Ingratiate' means doing extra to get on the nice list."

"Mom's been naughty," Sarah sighed. Robert folded his lips but then was unable to contain his laugh.

The herd of potentially unruly humans was kept well in line by a cohort of ushers, in green tunics and fancy pointed hats. Sarah didn't need to be told that they were supposed to be Elves. Elves lived with Santa at the North Pole and made toys. She was also aware, through some unsupervised reading, that Elves lived in the forests of Mirkwood and trapped unwary dwarves and hobbits who crossed them. Sometimes Elves were short and sometimes tall, but they usually had pointed ears. Sarah had made up her seven-year-old mind that since there didn't seem to be any unilateral criteria, being an elf must be something like being Jewish, like her friend Sherman in school.

These people weren't Elves, they were people pretending to be Elves. Some of them were bigger kids, most of them were pretty tall, and everyone looked a little cold. Their felt tunics and hats were worn over their winter clothes, giving them a unified but motley appearance. She held her father's hand, excited.

"Robert!" said a deep man's voice. Sarah looked up as her father greeted the stranger. They started talking, grownup talk. Sarah sighed and looked around the crowd in line. At her height, everyone five inches taller was a big kid, and everyone taller than that was a grownup. Inside this active sphere, she saw several of her classmates. Some she smiled at and some she spurned according to the unwritten laws of schoolyard politics. None of them were close enough to talk to anyway.

But there were shorter people in the crowd. She watched them with great interest. She didn't know them. And, though she couldn't have said so, she felt she ought to have known them, because they moved like children. Naughty children without parents. Liberated children who could go where they liked without being tugged here and there. They all had strange but not unfriendly faces, and wore clothing that ought to have made them colder than the fake Elves, all rags and tatters and broken bits of whatnot. They gamboled everywhere in the line, investigating pockets, buttons, shoelaces, stones, mud and snow. One came close, stroking the hem of her embroidered dress where it stuck out under her overcoat. "Go away," she ordered him. The little fellow stuck out his tongue at her, and Sarah responded in kind. Then he did three somersaults and started playing with Jenny Miller's rhinestone barrettes. She cried. Sarah smiled. Jenny Miller was a brat.

Cautious, she peeped up at her father, still deep in grownup talk with the other man. Then, quickly and quietly with no one to stop her, she followed the crowd of the strange not-children as they congregated on Santa Claus.

"It's not your turn," commanded a voice, and a candy-cane staff was put across her path. Sarah scowled at it, then at the owner of the forbidding voice. She stared and stared. He was dressed in red and green but his clothing wasn't felt. There were gold bells on the dagged edges of his sleeves, and his eyes were funny.

He was only a few inches taller than her, which would normally just mean he was one of the big kids. But he didn't move or speak like a child. Sarah decided she did not care for the way he was looking at her, a combination of boredom and ire.

"Says who? You're not the boss of Santa Claus."

"No, tonight Santa Claus is the boss of me. And you ought to be more respectful. Don't you know your great good fortune? This is THE Santa Claus here in this vulgar backwater, not some performer."

"Of course it's Santa Claus," Sarah said. She decided whoever this adult-boy-elf person was, he wasn't very smart.

"Not always."

"You're not one of the Elves who are supposed to be here," she said.

He gave her a strange smile. "I'm playing at being an elf."

"You aren't an elf."

"That's what I said!"

"But you're not a grownup, either."

At this, the fake elf folded his arms across his chest and refused to speak.

Sarah decided to be conciliatory. "Why are you playing at being an elf," she said.

"Because Santa Claus needs a proper entourage, and neither Zwarte Piet nor the Krampus could make it tonight. Also, I am deep in the naughty list and I need a few more good deeds to get me out of trouble this year."

"You're trying to ingratiate yourself," Sarah said wisely.

"True." He gave her a second look, then tapped his candy-cane crook smartly across her winter boots. "How old are you?"

"Seven-going-on-eight," she said. "How old are YOU?"

"Older!" he laughed with a trill. The crowd of not-children descended on Santa Claus, tugging his beard and investigating his red velvet bag of presents. "What's your name?"

"Sarah Williams. What's yours?"

He laughed at her again. "I won't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Because MY name is a present, and if you get a present from me, you won't get any others for Christmas this year."

Sarah thought this over. While she was planning her next stratagem, the not-Elf kept one eye on her and the other on the horde of not-children swarming Santa's throne. "Who are they?" she asked, pointing. "Do you know them?"

"I know each and every one of them by name. Like Santa, I have an entourage, though mine is more a punishment than a perk of office."

That word again. She decided to ask her father later what "entourage" meant, since the not-elf seemed to be as much of a brat as Jenny Miller when it came to answering questions. It probably meant something similar to the way her parents dragged her around. An entourage was probably the people who pulled you this way and that and never let you go anywhere alone. She decided she felt sorry for him. He was looking at her again in a way she wasn't sure she disliked. She decided she liked him.

"I bet Santa puts you on the nice list," she said. "I'll tell him so when I see him."

He did something totally unexpected. He doffed his hat to her, with a sweet jingling of golden bells. "My most gracious thanks, Sarah Williams. I shall do the same for you."

"Sarah! Sarah!" She heard her father's voice, saw his torso swimming out of the crowd, looking for her.

"That's my dad," she said reluctantly. "I've got to go. Goodbye." She thought about trying to shake his hand, but it seemed as though he had his hands full. Instead, she dropped him a curtsy, a pretty trick her mother had taught her.

Her father had brought her a popcorn ball drizzled with honey, and a cup of hot cider. She ate and let the sweetness fill her mouth, and looked for the not-elf as the line snaked towards Santa Claus, but did not see him again. An added treat that drove her nearly to distraction, her mother had finished ingratiating herself and was there when she sat on Santa's lap and asked for a doll, a crown, and a puzzle. Further Christmas festivities were curtailed when Sarah announced, fifteen minutes after meeting Santa Claus, that she needed to go to the bathroom NOW. In all, it was the most successful Christmas celebration ever seen in the Williams household to that date.

"I just don't understand it," Robert said to his wife, the morning of Christmas day. The present which had gotten pride of place was one addressed to Sarah, wrapped in silver and gilt paper, tied with an enormous red bow. The wrapping was in tatters now, and Sarah stared and stared at the gift now unwrapped, as if she could never look enough.

It was her doll. Over a foot tall, a fairy king in blue and silver, with slightly unsuitable horns curving out of his impish porcelain face. His clothing was all velvet and silk, boots polished leather. It was the most finely made toy Robert had ever seen, and the giver was a mystery.

"What did the label say?" asked Linda in a weary voice. Christmas day had begun at six AM and the coffee had not taken yet.

"It said "To Sarah, from Santa Claus," said Robert. "Was it your sister, do you think?"

"Anything's possible. It's a very nice doll, don't you think?"