12Howdy and Happy Back-to-School for many of you! Today is the 24th and that means there are only 4 months left until Christmas!

Of course, if you saw the countdown clock in the town square here at the North Pole you’d think Christmas is still 9 months away.

That countdown clock has never been off before but today I saw it as I was walking in to work. It said “Happy 24th! There are 9 months until Christmas!”

Well, that’s not right.

In fact, there are a lot of little “not right” things going on at the North Pole right now. The clock is just one of them.

I’d tell you the other weird things going on but Santa said I better stop talking about them. He is a little worried about our Merry Prankster. He says the fact that we can’t figure out who is doing this stuff is not a good sign.

I say the bigger worry is that Santa is worried. We don’t see that happen very much.

In other news, the North Pole is crawling with new reindeer. Every year for a whole week Santa lets the 1-year-old reindeer visit the North Pole with their parents.

They are so very excited to be here. We only have them for a week but they are so much fun. It is surprising to see them come back as trainees as 2-year-olds because they grow so much in that time. The 2-year-olds come in for training in October and some of them may be good enough to actually fly on Christmas Eve.

Elf Ernest