The Accidental Gentrifist Presents Outsource: The Elf-Destruction of the North Arctic Toy Trade
Editors’ Note: The opinions and ideas expressed in The Accidental Gentrifist are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook or beliefs of anyone else in the Ist network.
I vaguely recall, when I was eight years old, writing a letter to the North Pole. I remember this letter in particular, because it was the year I didn’t write to Santa. Instead, I wrote to the Head Elf. My dad had recently led a brief strike among the union workers at the iron smelting plant where he worked, and I was fascinated by any form of manufacture. So, instead of a plaintive missive to Big Man, I wanted to know how the toy factory functioned. What it was like. I forget what specific questions I asked, but I remember first addressing it to the ‘Head Elf,’ before my dad told me to write ‘Foreman’ instead.
I believed in Santa back then. But that belief hasn’t exactly held up in the last two decades. So imagine my surprise when my mom called me to say she’d just received a letter addressed to me from the North Pole. The envelope looked ragged from years lost in the massive postal machine. It's front and back were covered with so many postmarks and sets of forwarding directions, that you could barely read the address of my childhood home. I was stunned. Even more stunned when my mom actually figured out how to use her scanner, and sent me several jpg images of each page of the letter inside.
Here, for your benefit, is a 22-year-old letter from Santa’s Foreman of the Elves.
Dear Benjamin,
Thank you for writing. It’s not very often we get letters from children who inquire about the elf laborers and the day-to-day workings of our vast toy plant.
First know this: the vast majority of Santa’s elves are homosexuals. That is, the male elves prefer the company of each other. The female elves could give a shit, as it is a biological fact that female elves don’t actually crave sexual gratification unless that part of their mind has already been activated by a pheromone response to the sexual advances of a male elf in spring. And since most male elves spend the spring either working or buggering each other in the desolate reaches of defrosting tundra, most females never know the difference, and the ones who do are more the miserable for it. Our population’s survival can be largely credited to the female’s tendency to have sextuplets. And to the odd hetero such as myself. While our ranks might be a tad homogeneous, straight elves have a pretty definite lock on the gene pool up here. Or, at least we did.
I suppose I should use the past tense, because it’s all over. Oh, don’t freak. There’s still a Santa. Christmas isn’t canceled. But all the toy-making jobs were given to creatures who can assemble a die-cast dump truck for fifteen cents an hour and one bathroom break. More on this later. First, the unavoidable explanation:
Yes, Santa Claus is real. If you don’t agree, that’s probably because he only visits children in the Netherlands. Holland and Belgium, that’s it. He won’t even go to the Dutch Antilles. He might leave a gift or two for an especially good Dutch boy or girl on holiday in Finland or something, but that’s about it. And he occasionally hits Alsace-Lorraine. Oh, and I know he did go to Poland once.
For everybody else, either you’ve got good parents or you’re used to disappointment. But in fairness, he can’t be blamed for the massive, multi-national marketing campaign that claims he rides a sleigh drawn by reindeer and benevolently pollinates the living rooms of all the children of the world, taking obvious bites from cookies and leaving miscreants precious lumps of coal in the midst of an energy crisis. Although the truth is just as believable: he rides an immortal white horse named Bad Weather, and he lives in a small palace near Madrid. Also, he and ‘Mrs.’ Claus never married. She doesn’t even live in the main house. You can find her out back in the pool house, downing peppermint martinis and baking stacks upon stacks of candy cane sugar cookies. Ask her why she lives next to the swimming pool and she’ll only say that Mr. Claus dresses like the Pope and ‘tends to have a house guest’.
In a rare instance of truth intermingling with consensus, the toy factory is in fact near the North Pole. Because that’s where we elves were from, originally. A labor source both inexpensive and rich in pluck. Or, so we thought.
Did you know that we elves are actually only short when we’re near the North or South Poles? It’s true. We actually grow taller as we approach the equator. (The time I went to Ecuador, I was six-foot-six. The hotel concierge kept trying to talk to me in Swedish.) When we’re in your cities, we’re basically indistinguishable from the average human. Only betrayed, perhaps, by a large hat pulled conspicuously low over the ears, or perhaps a pair of brown brogans than seem to stretch a tad too long. Anyway, we found out about the whole growing thing quite by accident. Just a passing observation during our mass exodus from the North Pole, after it became obvious our jobs had been permanently delivered from us.
As I already mentioned, the homosexual nature of the average man-elf has perpetuated an especially homogeneous society, not just biologically but also behaviorally and culturally. We never really experienced much internecine conflict, and due to our natural egalitarian leanings, our Protestant work ethic, and our calm and rational disposition, we never had much use for a union. We elves are from a different time, when people still had trust and a handshake meant something. A time when your vote counted and a dollar went a long way.
But then, a few years ago, the others started showing up. First it was the gnomes. They came from all over Europe, forced onto the arctic tundra by persistent deforestation. At first we had no problems with them working at the factory and everyone made a decent effort to welcome them. I mean, they had kids just like we did. But then Big Man realized they’d work for cheap tobacco and half the pay of an elf. Plus the naturally hardy gnome never asks for health insurance. And since they live to be three or four hundred years old, their collective pensions are a comfortably distant issue. When even more showed up there was a memo passed around that taught everyone how to say ‘hi’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘good afternoon’ in Gnomi. We even simplified and translated the operating instructions for the lathes and band saws.
Then came the sprites. Displaced by the war between trolls and gremlins, the sprites bitched about the cold from the moment they arrived. They also bitched about how many of them were relegated to janitorial jobs, as if it was some sort of conspiracy. But really, they’re just terrible on the floor and they usually forget what it is they’re supposed to be doing before they can finish doing whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing. I know, because I spent a year assigned to the completion of half-finished train sets.
Of course, when the brownies saw how easy the sprites had it, they had to come over too. But they can’t stand the cold either and have to tear off back to Orkney every few weeks so they can ‘thaw out’, which I personally believe is a thinly-veiled reference to marijuana and of course always seems to occur right as ten thousand empty teddy bears lie around waiting to get stuffed.
I think I hit a low point when the faeries started squatting in our barns and applying for work. Fucking faeries can’t lift anything heavier than a hobnail. I don’t even know why they moved to the arctic. Things had to be fine where they’re from. That is to say, every fucking pristine meadow between here and Islamabad. As long as it has a pool of clear water surrounding a babbling brook, butterflies and sparrows and butterflies and bumblebees and the scent of summer flowers and talking fucking mushrooms, right? I mean, that’s the kind of place where they live, right? It’s paradise. So why not just stay there? That’s where elves go on vacation for Christ’s sake.
Tomtes on the other hand have always worked in the factory. There have always been a few, as long as I can remember. But I noticed they started acting different when the others started showing up. Now they’re all ‘give me this’ and ‘I deserve that’. All self-righteous and uppity, just because in the old days they’d work without pay. Oh, and one day it’s okay to call them ‘nisse’, the next it’s not? What’s up with that? Shit, I don’t even care. I’ve been calling them ‘nisses’ forever, I’m not going to stop now. But they’re not all bad, not really. I guess you could say you got your ‘tomtes’, and then you got your nisses. (Although either way that all want to date Elven women.)
As long as we’re going down the roll, I may as well mention—for the sake of comprehensiveness—that Pixies show up for work dead drunk. I’ve seen it. Even the drill press operators and forklift drivers. At lunch in the cafeteria they leave their flasks out on the table, right in plain sight. Plus they beat their wives. It’s totally accepted in their culture.
Am I forgetting any other groups new to the Pole? Ah yes, the dwarves. Actually, better not get me started on the dwarves. Let’s be frank—everyone knows they just pretend to not understand you when you ask them who spilled the cocoa, or why they’re clocking out a half hour before the end of their shift. They just stare at you and shrug, like they don’t know a word of Elven. The foremen are totally ball-less and won’t stand up to them. At least the imps put in an honest day’s work.
Now a nymph is a creature I can be proud to work next to. They’re not afraid of getting their hands dirty, take pride in their toys, never complain, never bluff or talk big about starting a strike. It’s like they make it a point to always have something decent to say. So polite. But it is a fact that every vernal equinox they run off to these volcanic steam vents in Iceland where they all dance around a big stone phallus like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Jesus.
As long as we’re clearing the air, Santa’s ‘house guest’—Swarthy Pete—now that guy’s a real work of art. It’s said Mrs. Claus first relegated herself to the pool house after she came home early to find ol’ Nick had Pete shackled and chained, but otherwise they were naked as the day they were born. She’s the only one who’ll call out Pete for what he really is: an usurping, light-in-the-loafers gigolo. When Santa lets him barge in on the factory floor, demanding the elf in charge of paint change the color scheme on the wooden fire trucks from Siren Red to Spring Lavender, everybody’s all, ‘Oh that Pete. He sure is creative.’ Creative! Please.
But I didn’t much care, at least not by the time he really became a nuisance. The first of the elves had already left by then. I followed soon after. (I had unwittingly placed your letter in my knapsack just before I quit.) Ironically, I got a job in San Mateo, California, working in this lady’s back yard as a garden gnome. Sure, I have to take this drug to keep me small, and another one to help me keep still, but it’s good, honest work.
And half my day is in the shade.
