8. Santa Claus is concerned about the problem of Arctic ice. The ice is the spouse of the elves, and she is sick. She is the primary source of their magic, as the elves cannot be separated from the place where they live. For many years now, this is all they have asked for for Christmas: that the ice should come back.
9. Once an elf-Queen by the name of Gyfwoss rode her royal seal out onto the ice plain and called down the moon. She lifted her arms above her head and her hair turned blue and the moon drifted down the sky like a white petal. She held it in her arms like a child and somehow she was big enough, or it was small enough. She asked the moon for a gift and in her hands it turned into a pale silver present, wrapped with a sprig of pine and a lavender bow. When she took it home and opened it in her innermost chamber, she found a glass wedding ring. Once a year the moon turns into a very nice man with white hair and knocks on her door. Santa sometimes calls Gyfwoss Mrs. Claus, but everyone knows she is married to the moon, forever and for all time.
10. Santa Claus has only been seen seven times in all of his long career. This is a very good record. Mainly, he is seen because he wants to be. That or the reindeer give him away. The most recent sighting was in France, little Marguerite Lysan was sleeping in the back room of a cafe where her friend worked the morning baking shift. She didn’t see him because she deserved it more than other people. She didn’t see him because she was special. She saw him because a reindeer was lonely. She didn’t wake up when the man in red came into the house, but before midnight passed she felt a soft velvet nose nuzzle her hand, and then more, lightly fuzzed antlers beneath her fingers. She smiled as she opened her eyes, and saw a pair of eyes, deep and black, with stars in them.
11. Santa Claus actually met Jesus once, when they were both very young. Santa wasn’t even called Claus yet, and he didn’t wear red. He was just thin and tired and alone, and so was Jesus, and they shared some wine and talked about what it was like to be folklorically dense nexus points. You really can’t understand something like that without experiencing it. At the time no one even believed in them yet; they were just knots of colliding memes, waiting for their destiny, the way kids do after high school but before college, sitting out on that bridge over the river, kicking their feet out into the air, wondering what they’re going to be when they grow up.
12. Santa Claus doesn’t really like cookies and is lactose-intolerant. He doesn’t mind, though. He knows that it’s quite literally the thought that counts. Cookies are quantum clusters with a raspberry swirl and chocolate chips. They tell him who he is. They say: you are hot and sweet and alive, even in the cold, and in at least three other universes you wear purple. Without cookies, he might lose his moorings, and on a journey like his, you cannot afford to take a wrong turn down some pulsar-strewn alley.
13. The Coca-Cola Company sometimes claims to have invented the modern version of Santa Claus. That’s not true. What happened was that somewhere between the former terribly exciting coca-leaf-heavy recipe and the more staid “classic Coke” batches, a young cola-chef put forward and produced several cases of an experimental soft drink that induced in the entire board of Coca-Cola a series of fever dreams in which they were chased by a certain red-cloaked figure through a dark wood, their blood shrieking in their limbs, terror clutching at their throats, the smell of holly and Christmas everywhere and then, oh, the spear! Most of the board never quite recovered their wits, the cola-chef was summarily dismissed, and thereafter, the man in red begins to appear in Coca-Cola’s wintertime advertisements.
14. As to how Santa Claus delivers all those presents in one night, it has seemed clear for some time that he possesses a localized wormhole small enough to pack into a reasonably-sized steamer trunk and tidy enough to not smell too musty when taken out for the holidays.
15. It is probable that the silver jingle bells comprise a renewable energy source for the wormhole, being as they are the remains of superdense stars attached to his sleigh with red string.
16. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are not related, though of course they have had professional dealings, both of them being warriors, standing watch on either side of the winter. Santa feels it is rather cruel of the Bunny to hide the eggs, and the Bunny feels Santa makes the whole business rather too easy. It is a little known fact that the summer solstice and the autumn equinox also had champions. The Summer Horse brought dark red cherries and highly munchable tomatoes along with gifts of sunshine and unfrozen seas and little iron ponies mysteriously appearing on the mantle. The Autumn Maiden sat on a throne of pumpkins and whatever vessel she touched filled with steaming cider or cocoa. Children buried wishes written on bits of paper in the cooling earth, so that they would come up in the spring like tulips. Santa and the Bunny are all that’s left. Sometimes they miss their family, but they understand all too well the fragility of the consumer holiday cycle, and how thin the ropes that tie it to myth, like a boat barely tied to the pier.
17. During the rest of the year, Santa Claus sleeps. And studies advanced mathematics.
18. Santa Claus doesn’t need a chimney. A house is a closed system, and at one time the chimney was the only reasonable approach. It was the only vampire-proof entrance to a domicile, the doors being guarded by the invitation addendum and the chimney itself being far too filthy for the obsessive-compulsive vampire to bear. Santa Claus does not wish to be taken for a vampire. Vampires take, Santa Claus leaves. It’s not the same thing at all. But it is impossible to specifically invite Santa Claus, only to tacitly do so by the laying out of stockings, etc. Santa entered where he could. But these days, vigilance against vampires is extremely lax, and he can come through the front door without issue.
19. The list isn’t about naughty and nice. If you think about it, coal is a very useful present. Santa Claus isn’t a monster. You can burn that coal and stay warm in the winter. Just because it is black and grimy and it isn’t a fantastical electronic intelligent machine with a kung-fu grip and a pre-installed game suite doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful and warm and formed over millennia in the heart of the earth and very occasionally the difference between life and death. The list is about whether or not you need to figure out the lesson of the coal.
20. The stockings you hang up aren’t the size of your own feet. That would be silly—you need those socks in the December nights. They are the size of Santa Claus’s feet, which are wide and flat to help him get around the Pole.
21. The reindeer are immortal. They are, in fact, the eight demiurges of reindeer-kind, and this accounts for their flying. Their name might sound whimsical, but they are the closest the human tongue can come to approximating the true names of the caribou lords. Rudolph, far from being the adorable, earnest fellow of the tale, is in fact Ruyd-al-Olafforid, the All-Destroying Flame of the Yukon. His mother was Kali and his father was an ice floe. His nose appears red because his body is full of coals, and his eyes flare with a terrible conflagration of his soul. The tips of his antlers are like candles in the snowy wind. He is not vengeful, but he is the light in the dark of winter, consuming and giving life at the same time. Your carrots only make the lord of flame stronger.