8 Weeks Until Christmas

Just 8 weeks now until Christmas – can’t wait!

I told you last week I would tell you about Halloween at the North Pole.

It’s happening. It’s snowing like a bugger outside but we’ve got pumpkins and the orange and black everywhere. It’s the spooky season for sure.

The North Pole every year has a massive Halloween party. It is held inside. There is not a lot of trick-or-treating that goes on because the weather outside is frightful enough for everyone. Halloween is definitely an indoor sport at the North Pole.

Anyways.

Here it is two days before Halloween and you hardly see anyone out and about. I’m told that is because everyone is at home putting on the finishing touches on their costume.

Except me. My costume is done. Mrs. Claus helped me wrap it up more than a month ago. I have no aspirations of winning the costume contest or even being close to the best costume there. But I’m very happy with it.

Of course, I cannot tell you about it. That is a big North Pole Halloween tradition. Costumes are a big secret until revealed at the North Pole Halloween Party.

So I’ll tell you about it – or maybe Elf Harold or Elf Ernest will tell you about it, or Elves Frank and Crash – when they post up the news on Tuesday after Halloween is over.

I will tell you about the party though – and the big food fight that is sure to happen.

Along the ceilings in the big hall at the North Pole Community Center are large black plastic tarps rolled up and ready to be ripped down at a moments notice. In fact, Mrs. Claus had those tarps installed with a kind of rip cord – all one has to do is yank on the cord and the black plastic comes falling down.

That’s not decoration. That’s protection for the walls. Mrs. Claus has those put up first before any other decorations are done for the party.

She knows, as does everyone else, that after the excitement of the costume reveal, the contests, the games, the music and the dancing – that someone is going to start the annual food fight.

Everyone joins in the food fight. Even Santa and Mrs. Claus. Heck, one year Santa even turned a hose of kool-aid on the party crowd to start off the fight. I believe the North Pole News Team reported about that.

Anyways.

The food fight is an elf thing. They love messes. Elves love to surprise others, to get messy, and to laugh hard. That is what the annual food fight is all about.

Of course, Mrs. Claus insists on a few rules.

First of all, it’s got to be safe. So no throwing hard things like candies or apples or other stuff you might find at a Halloween Party.

And there’s no throwing hot food. Or good food. There’s always chili for example at the North Pole Halloween Party. That stuff gets eaten at the first of the event and put away.

Other foods aren’t used in the food fight either because Mrs. Claus doesn’t want the waste. Things like salads and stuff like that.

Mrs. Claus also insists that everyone stay behind no matter how messy they are to help clean up.

For her part in it all, even though Mrs. Claus says she does not care much for this silly Halloween tradition, she supplies a lot of the, um, ammunition. From Mrs. Claus’ own kitchen comes racks and racks of cream pies – all made in a special tin that is perfect for throwing. There’s banana cream, chocolate cream, pumpkin cream (of course), and even blueberry cream pies. There might be others but for as good as they are these pies are not for eating. They are for throwing.

There are other sweet concoctions for the food fight. There are water balloons filled with apple juice. Nobody drinks those, of course.

There are “snowballs”, which are really just scoops of vanilla ice cream lined up on the cold table. They all get thrown.

There are soft pastries – donuts and rolls and other soft, sometimes gooey, things to launch. There are thick cakes, frosted cupcakes and, a favorite for many, little pumpkin tarts that are suspiciously round and filled with cream cheese.

It’s all designed to get very messy and to be a lot of fun.

Yes, most Halloween costumes get destroyed in the process. In fact, it is the aim of many elves to design a costume that not only looks good and provides some type of entertainment but also one that protects the person inside.

The food fight tends to get up close and personal. A pie to the face seems to therefore be the ultimate aim.

Nobody is a bigger target than Santa, by the way.

Santa is very fast. And while things thrown or shot from a distance can hit him as much as it can anyone else there is a real challenge for anyone getting close to Santa. He’s usually very well prepared by donning a costume that somehow protects him. Santa also comes prepared.

One year Santa came dressed as a Mongolian Warrior. Frankly, for as stunning as his costume was, nobody really understood it. That is, until the food fight. In that costume Santa had a shield and a very effective weapon in a sling shot. Hardly any food touched him that year and he did a lot of damage.

Santa always has a lot of fun at the food fight and one of his favorite things to do is to “protect” Mrs. Claus. What I mean by that is that he often hovers close to where she is and he fires on anyone trying to do anything to her. Of course, if it gets intense Santa sometimes ducks and Mrs. Claus gets it. You know she gets tired of it when she becomes one of those trying to get him.

Anyways.

Halloween and the costume contest and the food fight are coming in just a few days. Everyone here is as excited for it as they are Christmas.

In fact, Halloween for many elves at the North Pole is the “gateway” for Christmas. The next morning after Halloween many are out working on the next contest – the Christmas lights contest.

So things are very merry here. It’s the holiday season, after all. It’s what we work for all year.

May you and yours have a very Happy Halloween!