Once upon a time, in a sleepy little town known as North Pole, Ga., situated in North Pole County, Santa Claus was the mayor and elves managed the county. A small team of reindeer pulled the sleigh in unison and the toys were delivered on time.

But over time, something went awry.

Contrary to popular myth, only six reindeer were needed to make a sleigh-team. When a shiny-nosed deer came along, they were able to harness a functional team of seven. But, by some fluke of fate, a knot-headed elf gained control of the engineering department and, following the "more is better" philosophy, the sleigh harness was outfitted for fifteen reindeer. Big mistake.

A team that large just couldn't get along. The bickering and head-butting grew worse and worse over time and it carried over into the toy-delivery job. As soon as the team landed on a rooftop, some of the reindeer would start stamping their feet, bellowing, head-butting and snorting...which occasionally awakened guard dogs and a few grumpy fellows with guns. Santa was lucky to survive several intense encounters.

Fortunately, Santa was a brave old elf, but the final straw was the nausea. Sure, the head-butting, bellowing and foot-stamping was getting old, but that didn't cause the nausea. The nausea came when the team divided into several factions and each one wanted to take the sleigh in a different direction. They all pulled very hard but the sleigh didn't go anywhere. Then the sleigh rotated 360 degrees clockwise, slowly at first, then gaining speed faster and faster. Santa's rosy cheeks grew paler and paler and he swore to himself that if he ever got out of that sleigh, he'd never get in again.

Santa remained true to his word; the sleigh-team was abandoned as the mode of toy delivery . The City of North Pole purchased a fleet of flatbed trucks to handle toy delivery. North Pole County already had a fleet of pickup trucks but they were controlled by the elf commission. Their routes overlap and their basic mission is the same, but for some reason, they never could work out the details of sharing a garage and a gas pump. But that's another story.

Without the sleigh to pull, the reindeer needed something to do, so they bought a horseshoe-shaped table and started meeting regularly to squabble over what's wrong with the truck deliveries.

A growing faction among the fifteen were the rednoses (also called Republicans but no one knows why). The most recent squabble was said to be caused by these rednosed Republicans. A veteran reindeer, a direct descendent of Donner, was ousted as the Honcho of the Feedbag Committee. Reindeer, being hungry critters, really like controlling the feedbags, so needless to say, he was really peeved about being ousted. He blamed it all on the rednoses.

In a fit of anger, he said, "These rednoses don't like me because Donner made fun of Rudolph. Besides, fog is rare and we don't really need all these lights shining in our feedbags." His point was clear and I'll share it with you when I figure it out.

Then he called some of the other reindeer names (like "traitor") for siding with the rednoses and insinutated that they were, unlike him, Santa's boot-lickers. This former Feedbag Honcho bragged about his bad-mouthing Santa and stomping on Santa's toes.

When asked for comment, Santa winked a twinkling eye and said, "Ho, Ho, Ho, leave me out of this...but remember, I'm not getting on that sleigh again."

If this squabble seems incoherent, try following the real events in City Hall.

The moral of the story is this: If we could get a few good trucks, we wouldn't need fifteen rowdy reindeer. We might miss the petty, turf-guarding bovines as a constant source of amusement, embarrassment and centrifugal motion nausea, but the toys would be delivered.

Copyright © 1997 Steve Scroggins - All rights reserved.