Santa’s Sack - Part One

It was a bright moonlit Christmas Eve when white snowflakes fluttered down from the sky and all the world seemed silent and covered in a deep layer of snow.

Three little girls named Jill, Jenny and Jemima were lying together in one enormous bed and they were fast asleep when the sound of jingling sleigh bells was suddenly heard outside their window, followed by the clatter and clip-clop of hooves upon a tiled roof.

“Jill and Jenny!”, said Jemima, excitedly, waking her sisters with a shake, “Can you here that? It’s Santa! Santa’s here!”.

Jill and Jenny were both quite sleepy but they sat up in bed and listened all the same.

“Yes! I hear it too”, said Jill, cupping her ear, “There is someone up on the roof”.

“That’s Santa Clause”, replied Jemima, leaping up out of bed and running towards their bedroom door; her face brightly beaming with wonder and excitement, “I’m going down to see”.

But her sister Jenny was more hesitant, “Wait Jemima”, she said, tugging upon her sisters elbow and holding her back, “Won’t Santa be cross if he sees us? Mother said that he only comes if children are asleep in bed”.

“Oh don’t worry”, said Jemima, confidently, “He won’t see me. I’ll just peek through the keyhole of the living room door”.

And, opening their bedroom door very slowly, so as not to make a creak with its hinges, Jemima crept out into the upstairs hallway of their house and, still in their bare feet, was followed shortly after by her two sisters who, though they tried hard to resist, were also very curious to see Santa.

Then, down a flight of carpeted wooden stairs, they tiptoed until they saw the living room door and its keyhole, from which a bright golden light was streaming.

“There’s only one keyhole and three of us”, whispered Jill, as they stood infront of the door.

“Shhh!”, whispered Jemima angrily, putting a finger up to her lips, “We’ll take turns to look and I’ll go first”.

Then Jemima leant forward, pressing her little eye against the keyhole and, as she looked through it, her jaw suddenly dropped in amazement.

“What do you see?”, asked Jenny, excitedly, “Let me see!”.

“Santa! I see Santa!”, whispered Jemima.

But there was something mesmerizing about what Jemima saw, for the light that was pouring out through the keyhole did not come from the 60watt lightbulb in the living room ceiling but from deep within Santa’s sack and then, suddenly, to the startled surprise of her two sisters, Jemima took hold of the handle of the living room door and, turning it, opened the door wide.

Thankfully, all they could see of Santa was his snow covered boots for he was standing inside the fireplace with his head up the chimney calling, “Get ready there, Donner and Blitzen. I’m coming back up now”.

But now that all three could see the light emerging from Santa’s sack, they were all quite mesmerized and, without thinking, the three little girls started to climb inside the sack.

Inside the sack, however, was not sack like at all but more like a deep hole down which all three of the girls now tumbled.

“My! That is odd”, said a little Elfin man in a green and red suit with pointy elfin ears, as he saw three girls tumble out of a dumb waiter and into a pile of sparkly packages and boxes, “It’s me who’s supposed to send things up. I’ve never before seen anything come down, especially not three little girls”.

Jemima and her sisters looked around then, startled.

“Where are we?”, she asked, rubbing her head that had gotten slightly bumped by the fall.

“You’re in the sack room?”, said the elf, helping the three little girls to their feet and noticing that they were wearing pink pyjamas and no socks or shoes upon their feet, “And you are rather inappropriately dressed for the North Pole”.

“Sack room?”, asked Jenny, yawning, slightly dazed and confused, looking round about her at what looked like an enormous storeroom full of Christmas packages.

“That’s right”, said the Elf, “I put presents in the dumb waiter and they get taken up into Santa’s sack; through a magic portal, ofcourse. It’s the only way that Santa can deliver all these presents to children around the world. Otherwise, he’d have to carry about a billion sacks and his sleigh just isn’t big enough”.

“You mean we’re in Santa’s workshop?”, asked Jemima, a big beaming smile suddenly spreading across her face.

“Oh no”, said the Elf, shaking his head vigorously and rattling a golden bell upon the tip of his pointed, green, velvet hat, “This is just Santa’s sorting and distribution office. Santa’s workshop or, rather, his toy factory, is next door”.

Then, Jemma noticed the pointed tips of the elf’s ears and, reaching out her hand, touched them.

“I’ve always wondered what an elf’s pointy ears felt like”, she said, “They feel a lot softer than I thought they would”.

Then the other two sisters touched the elf’s pointy ears and he started to blush with embarrassment, “They’re really quite ordinary”, he said “Although, we elf’s have very good hearing. We can even hear the sound of a snowflake as it hits the earth”.

But then, Jenny, who was rather more practical than her two sisters, Jill and Jemima started to worry, “Well it’s very nice, Mr Elf”, she said, “But how are we going to get home”.

Jemima put her head back inside the dumb waiter and, looking upwards, through a long, narrow, vertical corridor, thought that she could see stars at the top and the curling mist of white clouds.

“Can’t we just go back the same way we came?”, she asked the elf.

“Oh no”, said the elf, shaking his head and jingling that bell again, “You see, Santa takes his sack all round the world. If you go back up now, then you never know where you’ll end up; in Japan or Portugal or even Timbuktoo. It’s best that you stay here at the North Pole and wait till Santa gets back. He’ll only be a few hours at most. He’s very quick”.

Then the elf picked up a red and green telephone from a control panel to his left and pressed a pointy shaped earpiece against his pointy elfin ear.

“Mr Dogood”, he said into the telephone, “We have some visitors…no, they’re children…human children…they fell down the dumb waiter”.

“I’ve just spoken to my supervisor”, he said, replacing the receiver and turning to look at the girls, “He’ll take you to our visitor centre”.
Then, suddenly, a door in the wall of the giant storeroom slid open and another elf; this one, a little older and plumper than his colleague, entered and, looking at the three little girls, was stupefied.

“My word! It’s true”, he exclaimed, “I never would have believed it”.

“My thoughts exactly”, said the other elf, nodding and then his supervisor, who introduced himself as Mr Dogood, said, “Follow me children, this way to the visitor centre” and he led them out through the sliding door which closed behind them.