Please don’t disturb Mr. Claus. He’s way too busy working in his shop to stop and chat. So many things to do, so little time to do it before the sleigh must be loaded.
Just last night we only had a few moments together over the supper table before we rushed off and left the table cleaning to the elves. I went to my sewing room, he ambled out to his workshop. Both of us are scrambling to finish the last bits and pieces of projects before the church bells ring on Christmas Eve.
Its not that we leave everything to the last minute. In July, I organized visiting elves to assemble cloth tree ornaments. We snipped, stitched, stuffed and sewed it, racing the clock to finish before one elf hopped in her sleigh and left.
While we sewed, Santa sketched out plans for chess boards that close up into a box to hold the playing pieces.
Santa polished and varnished for hours on end. Just when I thought he had finally completed one box to wrap, he drilled holes beneath the squares to hold tiny, powerful, earth magnets in the board. He plastered an opposing earth magnet in the base of the plastic chess pieces. Impatient with air drying, Santa grabbed a hair dryer, turned it on high and let it blow.
Hair dryers do a great job speeding up the drying of wallboard plaster and other minor repairs — but under the dryer’s heat, those plastic chess pieces drooped, shrank and warped into droll caricatures of themselves. Santa Claus liked their new look, but went shopping to find duplicates for the gift’s recipient.
In August he took apart a child’s rocking chair to repair and use as a model for a second rocking chair. Sawdust permeated the air and coated all flat surfaces. His hair yellow with sawdust, he came in to proudly show off carefully formed seats. He mentioned the body shaped chair seat to everyone he met.
In October I began baking and freezing goodies for the holidays to come — banana bread, cookies, coffee cake. I would be done, but we keep snitching goodies for a snack every day or so. With the cold snap, the elves and these old bones welcome the warmth from the hot oven. The fresh goodies just make us jollier — even if our red suits do shrink faster.
In November, I lined up another crew of elves in front of a large bowl of popcorn, a pile of Fruit Loops and a small bowl of cranberries. I handed each elf a sewing needle with quilting thread and showed them how to chain together popcorn, cranberries and colorful cereal into a tree garland. The natural tree decor looks great outside and it feeds the birds. The 3-year-old elf needed a lot of help from Grandma Claus to place, thread and pull. The teenaged elves developed their own designs and finished quickly.
In December, our work schedule moved into high gear.
In the shop, Mr. Claus busily filled, sanded and painted the rocking chairs, assembled packages for gifts – and emphasized the amount of time he spent sculpting the seats in the child-sized rocking chairs.
Inside the sewing room, I hand stitched tiny stuffed doll arms to a small cloth body. An array of unfinished Christmas projects spread around my work room: a cheerful, reversible Christmas quilt, cross stitched fabric to make the skirt of an angel ornament, a bright, red, hand-knit scarf that needs five minutes with the yarn needle and a stack of ideas I hope to finish before Rudolf’s nose lights the sky.
One evening I stuffed and sewed cloth apples and a basket for Little Red Riding Hood, attached the ears to the big bad wolf and created a cap for grandma. I joined them altogether to make a topsy-turvy doll. Santa finished painting the white rocking chair. That inspired me to spend a few minutes making a simple Christmas cushion.
Santa Claus put a coat of candy red paint on the other rocking chair and insisted on setting Little Red Riding Hood in it.
Christmas Eve deadlines loom before us at the Claus house: house cleaning, cooking, shopping, a Christmas letter, but all are ignored. They can wait. Toys and gifts come first.
Early in the morning, I quickly stitched and stuffed four cloth ornaments. After supper, I whipped up just one more sweet for the holiday. Late at night, Santa watched me fold, pin and machine stitch the quilt binding in place before we both collapsed. For a few hours, quiet descended on Santa’s workshop as Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus took a short winter’s nap gaining enough energy to produce more toys for Santa’s pack.
(Santa’s helper, Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org.)