Santa's New Reindeer Team

Prologue

How It Came To Be

It seems like my best ideas come when I am not thinking too hard. This tends to sift out the worst of things and leaves me with the reality of it all. It also brought about an instinct to get friendly with my ballpoint pen. I have written innumerable poems, roastings, songs, short stories, old and new expressions (most are mine) about a telephone book thick, and a lengthy autobiography almost ready to be published. All of these were written to capture your imagination and interest with a lot of wit and humor thrown in.

One day I became mentally alert to the fact that I might be able to write a Christmas Story. It was with my disturbed observation that very little has been written to amuse the minds of our younger folk in a Christmas Story fashion for over half a century. I have visited many bookstores in various places around the country during my travels. However, I was surprised to learn that there wasn’t anything out there with much substance that could really set my soul on fire, or for that matter, nothing that even gave me a spark of life to read more.

It all started a couple of years ago when I wrote a short Christmas Story that was somewhat geared for all youngsters from three to ninety-three years of age for our Lions Club. With an imaginative agility to enjoy such a challenge, I wrote a short Christmas story. This was to be the format for what was “how it came to be.” It all took place a few weeks before Christmas, and I hurriedly made a few corrections and mailed it to everyone I knew. This more or less had somewhat of a sentimental flavor, as Christmas Stories usually do.

Now let me tell you about the feedback that I received. Surprisingly, many people called me and told me that it was fun to read and that they enjoyed it very much. Others said, “How did you ever come up with such an idea?” It was great! Everyone gave me a good review, except for one scrooge and suffering soul. He called it utterly ridiculous. You may have guessed it, of course. It was a relative of mine. Who else would dare to be so downright cruel? Now let me tell you, that statement got my mind turning to a hasty boiling point in no time flat. I made up my mind that I was going to give that son-of-a-gun not just a morsel of the Christmas Story he had read, but a hearty, full meal for his mind to mingle with and digest to the finish.

So here I was, going over and over everything that I had written. Things began to flash into my mind. With great hopes to enhance and embroider, I spontaneously created a specific type of picture in my mind.

To capture your interest in such a way that you would wish to read my story, I had to make it much longer, and I had to include several new ideas. So I got out my story stretcher and elasticized the whole thing considerably. It was not long, and my mind was working overtime. Sentences unfolded like the falling domino trick. Unfortunately, I do not type, so after a longhand endurance venture, my carpal tunnel syndrome began to talk to me. With an atypical mind-triggering mechanism that even an eight-day clock couldn’t stop, I eventually finished the first draft of this book. Needless to say, this entire story was like a dull rusty knife; it needed lots of honing and fine polishing before it was done. Finally, after going over it for the umpteenth time, I felt that it was ready for that scrooge guy that I spoke of earlier to read it. This should be a nice story for parents and grandparents to read while a child sits patiently on their lap. That is what I had in mind when I wrote this Santa Story.

So let’s move forward with this mental fantasy journey and discover what took place in Santa Land.