15 Weeks Until Christmas

Hi ho! Just 15 weeks to go until Christmas.

This week Mrs. Claus fulfilled her first assignment from Santa of the season. Santa sent Mrs. Claus to North Pole Flight Command to check on the readiness of things there.

Now, before you think that is weird remember that Mrs. Claus is a trained pilot. And many, many years have gone by where she has been the Head Elf in Charge, when Santa’s not been around (like last year). This was not her first inspection at Flight Command.

Anyway, we went over there and I got to see parts of North Pole Flight Command I’ve never seen before. Secret places.

We went to Central Command, a HUGE room – bigger than any auditorium you’ve ever been in. In the middle of this room is a circular desk – a big round counter like desk – with elves on computers and wearing headsets. But that’s not even the most interesting part.

It’s round because the rest of this room – which is also round – is set up like a giant pie. And each “piece of the pie” is representative of all five sectors.

Now, when I was in middle school, living with my parents in Sector 5 in Colorado, we went on vacation once by driving to Disneyland in California. On our way, we stayed a night in one of those big hotels in Las Vegas. The hotel had a big room with a whole giant wall of screens and my Dad really liked that room. It was big but nowhere near as big as the room I’m talking about at Flight Command. But in that one room my Dad could see all these screens showing basketball games, football games, horse races, swimming events, baseball games – sports of all kinds. All in one place, all with screens. Well, Flight Command is like that just a whole lot bigger and with a lot more screens.

And they are not watching games. There are screens for each sector, each regional tracking center and many places within those sectors. It was SO interesting.

And elves. Thousands and thousands of elves in one building all working on one thing: getting Santa around the world.

Mrs. Claus had seen all this before and, frankly, she was bored by it. But it was all new to me and I had NO IDEA it was like this.

They also had screens to places I had never thought about: the North Pole Post Office, Santa’s workshop, the Reindeer Barn – basically North Pole Flight Command has cameras everywhere.

Including the News Department. This was incredible to me. I got to see where news for all the North Pole websites is channeled out. I never thought about this before. But Elf Ed Zachary was there – in front of a computer with a headset on, like so many other elves – but he was directing news to the different websites.

And let me tell you – there is a lot of news coming out. Especially this week.

I don’t know how Mrs. Claus knows what is good or bad in an operation like that. But her report to Santa said North Pole Flight Command is in good shape and that things there are on-schedule.

I’m just a simple elf with new found respect for what Santa does.

Ta-ta until next week, friends.