Some weeks ago, Santa Claus called
for an urgent meeting in his headquarters of Rovaniemi, Lapland. In spite of
his blind faith in people’s good sense, he was starting to fear that European
kids are facing quite a difficult Christmas.
“So what?” asked, looking furiously at
the elf in charge of toy distribution in Germany. “Could anyone explain to me
why the hell the orders from southern Europe have not been dispatched yet?”
The blonde elf shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s not our fault, Santa! The tanned elves have a serious problem of over-indebtedness.
We are not willing to send them anything else until we are sure they will behave
in a more responsible way in the future”.
None of the “tanned elves” gave an answer
to such an arrogant remark, since they all were too busy trying to figure out
whether the small change in their pockets was enough for the way back. As
everyone knows, reindeers need to be fed with a large amount of plants, and
lichens and mushrooms’ prices had rocketed in recent times. In addition to
their difficulties to get the toys, southern elves were well aware that the
starving reindeers were not in the best condition to run around with the sleigh
weight.
In view of the scene, Santa went red
in the face and started to shout: “I don’t care in the least about debts,
markets and prices. We, the magic beings, must focus on real important things,
and our priority is making children happy”.
“I’m very sorry, sir, but I don’t
agree”, the British elf pointed out. “Our priority must be the preservation of our
magic privileges by keeping others at a proper distance”.
A little hoity-toity elf snorted in
disdain at this speech: “Mon Dieu! Some people don’t even try to hide how happy
they would be if this magic community broke up”.
At this point Santa, who seemed to
be on the edge of a breakdown, stood up with a defeated look on his face and
announced: “Congratulations! You guys drive me crazy: my patience is over! I’ve
heard more rubbish in this meeting than I had done in centuries. From now on I don’t
want to hear from you… You can be sure I’ll find a way to get enough toys for
all my children!”
Said and done, Santa made his way to
his office, opened Skype and called a number reserved for extremely serious
situations. One minute later he was seeing on the screen a smiling man wearing a
huge turban.
“Hi, Santa! What’s
up, my friend? Great to hear
from you! You look worried… Affected by the euro crisis? Maybe you should get
your cholesterol tested…”
“Stop kidding me, Balthazar”, Santa interrupted.
“I need your help. All my assistants are hopeless. Could you take over work in Ireland,
Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece?”
“Don’t worry, my friend”, Balthazar
laughed. “You can always count on the Three Wise Men! Let me tell you that we
were expecting your call. In fact, Caspar and Melchior are in China placing a
special order to supply those countries…”
And that’s the reason why a lot of European
kids will receive their toys “made in China” from the Wise Men on January 6th.
