28 Weeks Until Christmas

Hi ho, friends! There are 28 weeks until Christmas and I’ve got a story I’m working on.

I have actually been home from vacation for about a week but I was met right away with a bit of a mystery right after I returned from Colorado.

Trixie – my reindeer – is still here.

When I left we said goodbye because I just assumed she would be heading out for the test flights of Santa’s sleigh, which we have known all year long would start the first week of June.

I came home to see her lounging in the barn without a care in the world.

Upon further investigation with the small team at the Reindeer Barn I learned that Trixie has not been called in to service yet with the test flight team.

Confused, I headed to Elf Victor’s office to see if I could find out what was going on.

He wasn’t there. Nobody was.

I went to North Pole Flight Command because they usually have the press office there with information ready for North Pole reporters. It was closed up tight as a drum.

In fact, all of North Pole Flight Command is completely dark, locked up and nobody is there. It’s completely weird.

So, I headed over to the Sleigh Barn, figuring all the sleigh designers and engineers would know how the test flights were going.

But there was nobody there, either.

Next I headed to go see Elf Ernest, but he refused to talk to me. I poked my head in his office doorway, he held up a hand and said, “I know what you want and I can’t tell you so don’t even try to ask”.

I called Elf Crash Murphy. He asked me about the weather in Colorado and then said that if I wanted to talk about Santa trackers that would be fine but if my questions had anything to do with sleighs or reindeer he could not help me.

Why is everyone stonewalling me? Why can I not find anyone willing to talk about simple test flights and Santa’s new sleigh?

I wish, after a full week of digging into this, that I had some better answers for you beyond what I’m sharing below. This information was given to me by Mrs. Claus, so you know it’s legit, but it’s not much:

1. Santa is not on vacation. He’s actually working the test flight project.

2. The test flights are within 700 miles of the North Pole and they aren’t being shown on a map to anyone.

3. Many of the elves from North Pole Flight Command are still on vacation but Santa does have a small team with him to run the flights. There are no video cameras, no devices, no Internet connections and absolutely no information getting out about the flights.

4. The reindeer that are with Santa are all Class C talent. They are good reindeer – you can’t fly for Santa without being great – but these are not “the best” reindeer by any stretch of the imagination. None of the elite test flight reindeer are there, including my Trixie.

5. Mrs. Claus does not know when Santa will be back and she’s not sure exactly what he is doing there.

Elf Frank Myrrh of North Pole Radio News wants to interview me. That’s not going to happen because I cannot tell him more than what I just shared above.

He tells me the News Department at the North Pole has just been flooded with questions since the last episode of the North Pole Podcast dropped.

So, Trixie, you might ask, how was your vacation?

It was great. I went back home to Colorado to see my parents. I’ll tell you more about it later. In the meantime, I’m determined to figure out what the deal is with Santa’s sleigh and the test flights this year.

Until then,