elfwrapperSalutations and Greetings, my merry friends!

The countdown continues here at the North Pole. We marked 9 months to Christmas today with the celebration of all new speed tape dispensers in the Wrapping Department. Elf Wally and his team have been in training for two weeks just learning how to use them.

If you think about it the idea of mixing something sticky with doing something fast seems a little tricky. Elf Wally says it really took the guys in the Wrapping Department a little while to get the hang of it. Most automated tape dispensers just spit out a new piece of tape when you tear off an old piece but these new tape dispensers just spit out a new piece of tape every five seconds. That means the elves have to be really fast at wrapping everything and moving along very quickly.

Most elves can do it but Elf Jeremy really got himself into trouble because he tends to be very particular about what a wrapped present looks like. He got stuck trying to wrap a skateboard and that’s an odd sized object. He got behind. Elf Wally found poor Jeremy with tape stuck in his hair after about 5 minutes of trying to keep up with the dispenser.

So a lot more planning has to go into how odd things are wrapped.

But we think this will really help the Wrapping Department when it gets to be crunch time just before Santa flies next year. They have the rest of the year to work on it and to get faster.

Elf Hugo reports that Santa’s mailroom is still getting reports of snow from many areas of the world. That should change soon, according to Elf Billy in the weather center. We hope that as your thoughts turn to spring you remember good thoughts about Santa and Christmas. It will be here before you know it!

— Elf Ernest