“Just before you got here,” she says, “I opened one that said, ‘Dear Santa. All I want for Christmas is for my mother and father to stop shouting at each other.’ I just fell apart.”
“We get a lot of ‘Could you bring my father back from Iraq?’” says Gaby, the shop’s owner. Debbie answers as many Santa letters as she can, whenever she gets a break. She writes back using her elf name: Twinkle.
And she has help. Each week in November and December, a box of Santa letters is sent over to the nearby middle school, where the town’s eleven- and twelve-year-olds—the sixth graders—write back in the guise of elves. It is part of the curriculum.
Six of last year’s middle school elves, now aged thirteen, were arrested back in April for being in the final stages of plotting a mass murder, a Columbine-style school shooting. The information is sketchy, but apparently they had elaborate diagrams and code names and lists of the kids they were going to kill. I’ve come to North Pole to investigate the plot. What turned those elves bad? Were they serious? Was the town just too Christmassy?
I need to tread carefully. So far I’ve tried to ask only one person about it—James, the waiter in Pizza Hut—and it went down badly.
“North Pole is the greatest place I’ve ever been,” James told me as he poured my coffee. “The people here are always ready to do! We stay on track and we move on forward! We don’t let anything get us down. That’s the spirit of North Pole and the spirit of Christmas. People here are willing to put their best foot forward and be the best kind of people they can be.”
“I heard about the thing with the kids over at the middle school plotting a Columbine-style massacre,” I said.
At this, James let out a noise the likes of which I’ve never really heard before. It was an “Aaaaaah.” He sounded like a balloon being burst by me, with all the joy escaping from him like air.
“That was a, uh, shock. . . .” said James.
“You have to wonder why. . . .” I said.
“This is a very happy, cheerful, cheery place,” said James. “Anything more you need?”
“No,” I said. And James walked back to the counter, shooting me a sad look, as if to say, “What kind of a Grinch are you to bring that up?”
• • •
MONDAY NIGHT. People keep telling me that everybody in North Pole loves Christmas. But I’ve found someone who doesn’t. Her name is Jessie Desmond. I found her on Myspace.
“Christmas is a super big deal around here,” she e-mailed me before I set off for Alaska, “but for me it is a general hate. Please don’t go off me about that.”
We meet in a non-Christmassy bar of her choice on the edge of town. She’s in her early twenties. She was educated at the middle school and is now trying to make her way as a comic-book artist. She has the Batman logo tattooed on her hand.
“Christmas really grates on me, all the time, in the back of my head,” she tells me. “Christmas, Christmas, Christmas. It drives me nuts.”
“But there must be something you do like about North Pole,” I say.
Jessie thinks about this. “Well, if you get into an accident or something, everyone’s willing to help you,” she eventually says, shrugging.
I decide it’s safe to ask Jessie—being anti-Christmas—about the mass-murder plot.
“Do you know the boys?” I ask her.
She shakes her head.
“Apparently they drew up a list,” I say.
“Well, I have a hate list on my wall too,” Jessie replies.
“Yes,” I say, “but I’m sure you don’t have access to weapons.”
“I have a revolver in my bedroom,” Jessie says.
“Do you stand in front of the mirror with it and shout ‘Freeze!’ and imagine what it’s like to kill your enemies?” I ask.
There’s a silence.
“I might,” says Jessie, finally.
I ask Jessie if she’ll take me to her house and show me her gun. On the way she tells me she suspects the boys were just like her—all talk—and the town only took them seriously because everyone is terrified of everything these days.
Although this is late October, Jessie’s house is extremely Christmassy. Her parents, Mike and Edith (a former Miss Alaska), are great fans of Christmas.
“Did you see my Christmas balls up front?” Edith asks me. “The nicest thing about living in North Pole is that you can leave your Christmas decorations up all year.”
“Are there people in North Pole who don’t like Christmas?” I ask.
“I don’t know any,” says Mike.
I glance at Jessie. She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor at their feet, displaying no emotion.
Mike shows me the mounted head of a sheep he once shot. It’s wearing tinsel.
“You never think that having decorations up all year round is too much Christmas?” I ask.
Edith shakes her head.
“No,” she says firmly. “No. I love Christmas. It’s my favorite time.”
“Jessie,” I say. “Will you show me your gun?”
“Sure,” she says.
I tell Mr. and Mrs. Desmond that it was lovely to meet them, and I walk with Jessie down the corridor. We pass a row of paintings depicting Santa in various festive settings, in front of log fires, etc. Across the corridor is Jessie’s bedroom. It is free of anything Christmassy.
“Does your mother know . . . ?” I begin.
“That I don’t like Christmas?” says Jessie.
I nod.
“I’ve told her,” she says. “But I don’t think she believes me.” She rummages around her wardrobe and pulls out her revolver.
“You’re the first person to see it,” she says.
She straightens her arm like in a police movie. She says she sometimes pretends to kill the kids who bullied her in middle school. “I walk up to them when no one is around and I bop them over the head and shoot them!” she says. “Ha-ha!”
Jessie says the person I should really ask about the plot is Jeff Jacobson. He teaches sixth grade at the middle school. He must have known the boys. Plus Jeff was mayor of North Pole until last week. If anyone who knows is willing to tell, it’s Jeff, Jessie says.
I leave Jessie’s and call Jeff Jacobson. He says I’m welcome to visit him tomorrow at the school during the lunch period.
Dusk is settling. One of the town’s two giant Santa sculptures—the one outside the RV park—lights up. It’s lit from below, which gives Santa’s eyes a hollow, creepy look, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.
• • •
TUESDAY MORNING. Apparently the kids who were plotting the shootings were Goths. Earl Dalman, the owner of the permanently Christmas-decorated Dalman’s Family Restaurant, the most popular restaurant in town, tells me this. Just about everyone who lives in North Pole eats breakfast at Dalman’s. It has a lovely, festive, community feel, even if the decorations are looking frayed.
There’s Debbie—Twinkle—who looks like she’s been up all night opening letters to Santa. There’s Mary Christmas, who runs the Santa Claus House gift shop. That’s her real name. It’s on her birth certificate. And there’s Earl Dalman, the owner of the diner. We get to talking.
“Do you know anything about that shooting plot over at the middle school?” I ask him.
“The kids were Goths,” he says.
“Really?” I say.
Earl gives me a look to say, “Well, of course they were Goths. What else would they be?”
“Where I come from,” I explain, “Goths aren’t dangerous.”
“Really?” says Earl, surprised.
“Goths don’t do anything bad in the UK,” I say. “They’re a gentle and essentially middle-class subculture.”
“Huh!” says Earl.
“I suppose the difference is that the Goths in Britain aren’t armed,” I muse. “They’re so death-obsessed, it’s probably good to keep them away from guns.”