Rose

Greetings From the North Pole, Part VII

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

Blogger’s Note: Over Christmas 2003, we became annual pen-pals with an elf named Siberius Quill, and he has again delivered this year! Transcriptions of the 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 letters from Quill can be seen here.

Christmas 2009

My dearest Children!

I must say, it has been a Most Eventful Year, both in your home and in ours! Such bustle down below (in Minnesota!), what with the Four of you now all school-age and active, and your parents rushing hither and yon to this and that engagement. Concerts, practices, games, retreats! It’s no wonder the Old Year slipped past so quickly! Does it feel that way even to Young Ones like yourselves? After centuries here in the White North, it all seems but a blink to my eye…

And my! but we have been busy here—about the same time you were enjoying Thanksgiving at the Venjohns, all our best Reindeer came down with Caribou Flu, which is not unlike your swine flu: dreadful wheezing coughs and high fevers and constant fatigue. It passed through the herd quickly, like a rumor of an Early Spring, and we wondered how we would haul the sleigh. Our elfin veterinarian, Dr. Vendy Deervermer, and the rest of the Stable Corps worked double-time to nurse them back to health (and drinking extra cocoa to ward off the flu themselves!), even as our Aeroanimage, Buoyancy Castor, struggled to find a suitable substitute, just in case. Aeroanimagery, you may know or might guess, is the magical art by which Terrestrial (that is, Earthbound) Creatures are made to fly, and old Yancy is the Best in the Business—but with the nearby caribou herds also sick, his Viable Options were limited indeed!

Only two creatures were deemed large and strong enough; the Walruses proved quite “broncy,” as your father’s friend Jinglebob might say, when airborne, and the Polar Bears—suffice it to say that it takes more than Pixie Dust to keep Ursus maritimus aloft. Plus, they eat a Great Deal and won’t touch vegetables—and very Few Homes indeed leave cold cuts or hard sausage, much less raw red meat, for Old Santa’s draft stock!

It was Touch-and-Go to the last! Fortunately, Dr. Vendy concocted a home remedy made from homemade udder balm from a moose dairy in Siberia, cooling Peppermint Paste from our own Candy Kitchens, and traditional Inuit and Eskimo medicines, then boiled in a Tea. The resulting drink, along with the prayers of the Devout Sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Winter, seemed to move them to recovery. (That, and the Magnificent Storm predicted by old Flurious and even now snowing over you as sleep and wake—the Reindeer love nothing more that a long pull through snowy skies!)

But enough of Our Problems! You have been Good Children, one and all, again this year—and so what’s a Watcher to do but spy over your shoulder to see what Questions you might have for the Jolly Old Elf, himself, this year? We’ve done just that, so even as Father Christmas munches his cookies and smiles at Your Note, he is able to leave this letter in Timely Reply!

Miss Emma, you’ve asked about Numbers of Toys and the Time It Takes—and I trust Masters Gabriel and Trevor have similar concerns in their own Heads and Hearts. I would urge you to ask Master Brendan to share my Past Letters with you again, in which I explain more about Which Toys are Made and Which Toys are Gathered. But in truth, we still make Many Hundreds of Thousands of toys and order Countless more. We make toys year-round, and indeed deliver them secretly Whenever and Wherever they are needed—much as St. Nicholas of Myra took care of those in need centuries ago.

How long does it take? Why, it takes All the Time We Have, which is No Time at All, when you think about it. What we do isn’t Possible in any amount of time, and yet each year we get Faster! Our official Time-Keeper, Pendulus “Tick” Chronin may actually be the slowest Elf at the Pole— except for his keen eye and quick thumb, which starts and stops the Great Chronometer at the start of each Shift, and each Christmas Eve. The G.C. measures time to the Nanosecond, and we have gotten so Lively and Quick at what we do that Tick may have to be quicker still. Picoseconds! Can you imagine?

And now I read back over What I Have Written, and see that perhaps it will make Little Sense to you. Facts are more Fluid than you might think, Children, and Faith, more Solid that Stone. Believe, and Wonderous Things are Yours to behold!

Travel safe, my young Friends, and a Very Happy Christmas to you all!

Yours (Truly!)

Quill

From the Archive: Holiday Letters 2006, 2005, 2004 and 2003

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

Okay, thank you to those few people who told me to post the old Christmas letters online. I got a little misty reading them. Hope I can find back to about 1998 …

In the meantime:

One more thing: We celebrate Christmas at the Thorp house, but have called these letter holiday letters since one of the early ones didn’t actually come our until around Valentine’s Day …

Four Kids; Four Tidbits

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

Blogger’s Note: Thought I’d share a little bit about the family from the past few weeks. Just random stuff. Little things …

I was digging through a closet and found a stack of National Geographic magazines from the turn of the century (the 21st Century, unfortunately). The April 2000 issue has an open-mouthed great white shark on it, and as soon as I saw it, I had a flashback to when Brendan was about three years old. I flipped it open and found a feature story called “Yemen United.” I flipped several more pages and found a full-page portrait of a dark-skinned, graceful Yemeni girl, her face more African than Asian, with deep brown eyes, wearing a purple headscarf with black flowers, a colorful floral-and-stripes dress, and a beaded necklace and silver rope chain around her neck.

I showed the cover it to Brendan. “Do you remember this?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he said. “We watched a show about those sharks.”

I open to page 52. “Do you remember this girl?” He is confused by the question and shakes his head no.

“She was your first crush,” I tell him. “When you were three, you used to find the shark magazine every night, look through it until you found this picture, and tell this girl, ‘Good night.'”

He looks embarrassed. “Really?” he asks.

No reason to be embarrassed, Bren. She’s beautiful.*

* * * * *

The Easter Bunny brought the kids Night at the Museum on DVD. Sunday afternoon, Trevor said he couldn’t wait to watch “Hotel After Dark.”

Later in the day, one of the kids said something about the Easter Bunny laying eggs in our house. He or she quickly changed it to hiding eggs, but the whole deal got a big laugh .. and got Trevor thinking.

“I know!” he said. “What if it was Christmas time, and Santa was a polar bear that laid presents!”

* * * * *

After Mass the other day, Father M called Gabriel (and the rest of us) into the vesting sacristy to give Gabe something. Because our middle son thinks he may want to be a priest when he grows up, Father had hinted that he had communion set of some sort for Gabe to practice with.

Gabe was so excited, but almost had to be pushed into the sacristy because it felt “off-limits” — like he was backstage without a pass. Father turned to him, smiling, and presented him with a long purple cleric’s stole, which appeared hand-woven south of the border. “You must always kiss it before you put it on,” Father said, and Gabe nodded, wide-eyed. Then Father gave him a large brown stoneware chalice and paten with the Words of Consecration on their rims. He took them, and stared, and said next to nothing.

Jodi and I both thanked Father, then coaxed Gabe to do the same. He did, haltingly. “We don’t use clay in this church,” said Father, “but this is a real set. Someday, when you’re ordained, you’ll get your own set, but you can practice with this one.”

Gabe said nothing, but nodded. “I think he’s in shock — a little overwhelmed,” I said.

As we walked to the car, I told Gabe that I had thought Father was going to give him some sort of kid’s set: a tin cup and plate, or something. “This was very generous of Father,” I said.

“Dad,” he said, “when I didn’t say anything right away, it was because I was surprised, and overwhelmed, and a little disappointed all at once, because I thought it would be gold, and it wasn’t. I didn’t know it was a real set.”

I told him that I understood how you get something in your head, and when it comes out differently, it can disappoint. “But remember Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? When Indy had to pick the right Grail and drink from it, but if he picked wrong, he would die? Of all those beautiful cups, which was the right one?”

Gabe’s face lit up. “The carpenter’s cup!”

“Right — the clay cup. Jesus wasn’t rich man, and neither were his disciples. He wouldn’t have had a gold cup!”

You should see him now: he kisses the stole, puts in on, and carries his chalice and paten with such care!

* * * * *

Emma has been working for several weeks, 10 to 15 minutes a night, to read Beverly Cleary’s Runaway Ralph. It was slow going at times — a “stretch” book from the get-go, since she’s just finishing first grade. But she insisted, persisted … and today got 10 out of 10 on her Accelerated Reader quiz, which means she understood what she read. Yeah, Rosie!

* * * * *

* I’ve search the Web over, and cannot find this photo, and I don’t feel right about scanning it. The photographer who shot it has books of famous National Geographic portraits and photos, including this famous Afghan girl. He does good work, and I’m sure he protects his copyrights.

Greetings From the North Pole, Part VI

/ J. Thorp / 5 Comments

Blogger’s Note: Over Christmas 2003, we became annual pen-pals with an elf named Siberius Quill, and he has again delivered this year! Transcriptions of the 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 letters from Quill can be seen here.

My dearest Children!

My, but the World is snowy where you live—White Christmas indeed! This is the weather Father Christmas likes: the sleigh runners slick with frost, and thick powder to soften and silence the landing. Kris Kringle should make good time tonight!

You are Good Children, one and all—obedient, respectful, joy-filled, and loving. Good Eggs, your Father might say; we say Good Apples, and you stand in sharp contrast to the Bad Apples, who “spoil the whole bunch,” as they say. Oh, you have your naughty moments, as all Young People do, but these moments of mischief and misbehavior are Lessons, one and all. Your Conscience speaks the Truth—it tells you Right from Wrong—and should you fail to hear It, your parents correct you, all as it Should Be. In that, you are Very Lucky.

Young Master Trevor, your laughter and shouts while opening your Christmas Eve gifts resound clear to the Auroras! Bless my soul, but you make a Joyous Noise! And as we are not bound by Time at the Pole (our nature being magical and the Earth’s rotation here being rather instantaneous), I am able to report that your happiness rang in the ears of Santa’s reindeer and was much-loved. It sparks them the fly high and pull hard! And your singing has caught the ear of our elfin Songmaster, Jovial Moralus, who ensures we elves have Proper Music to work by. Old Jove said your voice would raise the spirits of the most frostbit soul—some elves sing for centuries and never earn such high praise as that!

And Miss Emma—you grow lovelier each winter, and have become Quite The Help around the house. We could use such a hand as you in Santa’s Workshop—the tools get in such disarray during the busy days before Christmas Eve. The Tool-Mistress and Chief Shop-Keep, Methody Straitner, has been hard at work for years organizing the tools and benches and bins to ensure Peak Efficiency. She has seen your handiwork in the kitchen cupboard, and deems you a Natural!

Master Gabriel: I must compliment your question about the existence of frost dragons. Father Christmas and I are both honoured that you would entrust such a question—regarding the Very Existence of a Great Something you’ve never seen—to us, when we know your friends and neighbors have questioned our own Very Existence! I fear, however, that I cannot give you certainty. There is one among My People, a most adventuresome elf called Articus Chippenhammer, who left the Nail Corps when so many toys shifted from wood to plastic. His great-grandfather was a paleomythologist of some reknown, and Chippenhammer has since put his hammer to work exploring the Polar Wastes for signs of such Legends as Abominable Snowcreatures, Sasquatches, Frost Dragons, and the like. It is slow work, chipping away at millenia of rock and ice looking for Mere Fragments of white bone, hair or scales, and after decades of digging he’s found Nothing Conclusive yet.

And finally, B. You are strong, smart and responsible, and have done a remarkable job in your First Year helping your Family bring Christmas to fruition. Well done! A generous heart and a willingness to serve others will serve you well in life, Eldest Brother. Remember the Bishop of Myra, St. Nicholas, and Christ Himself, as your examples, and you will Have Love and Be Loved.

Happy Christmas to you and your family, and Safe Travels to your Busia and Dziadzi. God Bless You and your Family. I wish you All the Best in the New Year—and Always!

Yours truly,

Siberius Quill