31 Weeks Until Christmas

Well, well, well. There are 31 weeks now until Christmas and all anyone can talk about are all the big-name reindeer “in camp”.

This thing between Santa and Mrs. Claus with the red and pink sleighs has taken the North Pole by storm.

As I told you a few weeks back, Santa and Mrs. Claus are testing a radical new sleigh design. There are two of these fancy sleighs, one is red and the other is pink. Santa is team red and Mrs. Claus is team pink.

Since they are testing these sleighs with all-boy and all-girl reindeer, they have held a draft of sorts – you know how sports teams draft players? – and THAT has got everyone talking.

Over a period of about three weeks Santa and Mrs. Claus recalled reindeer to the North Pole from their various homes.

Not ALL of the A-Team of reindeer are here but many of them are. After a lot of time names were chosen one by one by the Clauses and this is where it now stands:

Team Red – Piloted by Santa:
Dasher
Donner
Blitzen
Rudolph
Pokey
Thor
Ryder
The Mighty Mick

Team Pink – Piloted by Mrs. Claus
Trixie
Vixen
Dancer
Prancer
Lupita
Daisy
Flora
Olivia

You might recognize these reindeer. There are the famous ones – and you know their names – and there are reindeer on both teams who have either served on the Christmas back-up team or on the test flight squad in years past.

In other words, these are some of the very best, fastest and strongest reindeer on the planet.

Whatever this radical new sleigh means it is clear that Santa and Mrs. Claus are not messing around.

Meanwhile, there are hundreds of other reindeer at the North Pole, too. They are the regular squads of test flight reindeer and they are in training for the regularly scheduled test flights of the sleigh intended for Santa’s flight this year. They begin those flights the first week of June.

Do NOT confuse these two efforts. The flights in June are supporting the actual sleigh being considered for Santa’s next Christmas flight.

The Team Red and Team Pink sleighs are experimental and Santa has been sure to tell us that there are no Christmas flight plans currently in place for this sleigh.

Please keep that in mind as the news from the North Pole gets reported in the weeks and months ahead. There are two test flights going on, one the real deal, the other just experimental.

The North Pole has experienced some confusion about all these. Someone, during the draft of the reindeer teams for the Experimental Squad, said Santa was going to fly the Red Sleigh this Christmas if he “wins” whatever it is he is competing against with Team Pink.

Santa says that is NOT true.

Elf Frank Myrrh and Elf Crash Murphy are working on a podcast about this whole thing and we hope they can sort out the many questions that elves at the North Pole – and people around the world – have about this thing.

Stay tuned.