46 Weeks Until Christmas

46 Weeks until Christmas now and we’ve got mail!

This week I really dug into the many questions that come in to us via SantaUpdate.com.

Unlike some elves, I am really bad at email. Just because I write for the News Department here at SantaUpdate.com and over at SantaTrackers.net, I get some mail. I’m not anyone important but because I am on these websites people send me questions.

One question made me ask questions this week. “Trixie,” a girl named Maddie wrote me from the United States, “Will Santa hold Toyvember again this year?”

What a great question.

Last year Santa called for one of the longest Toyvembers ever. What is Toyvember?

It is a brainstorming event for elves about toys. Every once in a while Santa will ask for new toy ideas. To get them he will call for a Toyvember which is a period of time where all elves are given time off work in order to concentrate on toys. They go home to their workshops and create toys of all kinds. Then they submit their ideas via models, prototypes and drawings to Santa for possible production.

It is a contest. Whoever wins Toyvember wins a big contract. Elves love to compete and winning Toyvember is a big honor – a big game changer in the life of an elf.

I did not participate much in the last Toyvember. I’m an elf but not a toymaker elf. I don’t think I have many great ideas for toys much less the ability to make them.

But Santa does not require you to be an elf to take part in Toyvember. The important thing, Santa says, isn’t that you’re an elf. It is that you are a former kid.

Still, I have no idea really how this Toyvember thing really works.

Unlike most things at the North Pole Toyvember is not traditional. Santa will call for it at random.

It does not fall on a set day, like Christmas. And it can last for months and months and months – or maybe a week or even a day. It is different every time.

So, being so fluid and unpredictable in nature, I took this question about a Toyvember this year right to the top. I took it right to Santa.

“Santa,” I said. “The world wants to know: will there be a Toyvember this year?”

Santa stopped for a second. He said, “Hmmm….Toyvember! I’ll have to think about that!”

And that’s all he said.

So, Maddie, Santa’s thinking. I’m thinking. You’re thinking. But nobody yet knows if Toyvember is coming.

And that is a weird thing. Because Santa is a planner. The North Pole and all of us elves are, to borrow a phrase, slaves to tradition.

But nobody knows. Sorry.

Toodles.