20 Weeks Until Christmas

Hi ho! Just 20 weeks to go until Christmas!

And that’s a cause for concern.

At least to one certain elf in Santa’s workshop that I talked to today. He is a supervisor, I won’t say which one. But he’s really worried.

“We have almost four months left until Christmas and we’ve have more than 5 months of work to get done,” he said. “Toyvember really put us behind!”

His comments came as such a shock to me that I asked both Santa and Elf Bernard about it. Elf Bernard was cool. He looked down at his pointy shoes and said, “Santa’s not worried about it”.

And when I asked Santa about it he just laughed. “The workshop will be just fine” Santa waved.

I don’t know what to think.

The workshop certainly looks busy. Every time I go over there for a meeting or on a mission for Mrs. Claus they make me put on a hard hat and walk between yellow lines painted on the floor.

All the meeting rooms and offices are upstairs and you can see the whole vast layout there of various workstations and production lines.

The elves look like ants from up there. You see them moving all over the place – lifting, measuring, cutting, welding, molding, assembling – just a ton of activity going on all at one time it looks like an ocean of motion.

But nobody is moving super fast. They are working hard, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t see any panic or anxiety.

But the bean counters upstairs in the office – you know, those elves who write on white boards and carry clipboards? They are all kind of freaking out right now.

One of them, you may know him, Elf Edsel, told me – “Do you know how many Barbie heads we need to screw on each day between now and Thanksgiving? We need to average about 14 million heads a day! I have a feeling we could have some headless Barbies come Christmas morning if we don’t step on it and fast.”

I caught Elf Bernard on the stairs and I asked him about the Barbie head thing. “14 million sounds like a lot but it’s not a lot,” Elf Bernard said. “On our best days we’ve done as many as 23 million. We can do it. There won’t be one headless Barbie made here this year, I swear it!”

Then Bernard stormed off, went into the conference room where Elf Edsel was, and I heard a little bit of yelling.

I don’t think they’ll be talking numbers outside of that office again.

I’ve talked to Elf Ed Zachary, our News Department head elf, and he’s going to put someone on the story. You can bet they’ll stay on top of it.

With just 20 weeks to go now, it’s crunch time at the North Pole. We’re all busy. Very busy.

Til next week.