33 Weeks Until Christmas

33 weeks now to Christmas…and I’m really behind in my duties here. I’m really sorry.

Elf Ernest warned me this would happen. He said being able to post an update to the countdown every week would be hard. I wanted to do an update every day, like we do in November and December. But he said doing it just once a week would be a challenge.

He was right. The past couple of weeks I’ve been taking mandatory elf training. It’s the stuff every elf at the North Pole should do every year. I haven’t done it yet because I’m a student and an intern. That’s a fancy way of saying I’m not an “official” elf.

Well, now I am. About a month ago Elf Ernest called me into his office and told me I had to take this training. He did not make it sound like a big deal but it really is.

Before I agreed to go I asked him, “Does this mean I’m a real elf now?” And he just smiled and said, “Yeah, I guess so.” He’s so cute that way.

Anyways.

My first course was in gift wrapping. I tried to get some tips from Elf Crash Murphy before going to this thing because you know he used to work in the Wrapping Department as a tape dispenser technician.

Crash told me to be very afraid and he wasn’t kidding. It was HARD. The first class was on gift wrapping culture. You see, not everyone around the world wraps Christmas presents the same way and many expect certain things to happen. For example, did you know that some Pacific Islanders don’t wrap their presents in paper at all? They use leaves – like big palms and other tropical kinds of plants.

Well you know what? Tape just doesn’t stick to a big palm branch. That stuff isn’t flexible, it dries out fast and it’s a bugger to use on small things. And I had to pass a course on how to wrap presents with that stuff!

There were other courses of basic elf training, too. There’s the geography course, the stocking stuffer course, the Basic Elf Intelligence Exam, the reindeer studies course and the Basics of Woodworking Workshop.

This is all stuff that I’m not getting at college, by the way. And it is a lot harder too.

Let me give a word of advice to those Santa tracker elves out there who really want to come to the North Pole to work for Santa someday: get ready to study and work really hard. It takes a LOT to pass these tests.

And I’m not done. I’ve got stuff to do that will take a few more months and I have to be done BEFORE Christmas in July. No pressure!

Anyways.

I’m really sorry for falling behind on the countdown. We’re now at 33 weeks and, for this busy elf at least, the time is just going by too fast.

I’ve got to get back to the books. I need to pass that elf test!