Santa's Secret

 SANTA'S SECRET

Elves must die.  We all knew this.  It was part of the plan, the deal struck by the ancient elf who had rendered us unto Santa millennia ago.

Deliver us up to you, Oh Beast,
Let us share with you, Blessed Feast,
We join you in rejecting the One Eye, Oh Helper,
Now we serve you, our most and our least.

That was the curse our ancient forebears mouthed in exchange for an end to the annual winter sacrifice of one elf child.  They cursed us.

When the ancient elves agreed this compact, they had lived in fear for millennia still of the great cloven hoofs that beat the ground pulling a wagon.  It shot across the sky and landed, and iron chains rattled as if to remind those meek elves of the power of the great skyward one and his sway over them.

The compact was our acknowledgement of this power, though it began as a dream.  We were not always small.  You imagine elves as diminutive.  Yet we were tall, as tall as the steel skyscraper Man has built that breach the blue skies.  Indeed, we were taller yet.  And we were not known as elves then.  The elf is an invention of ignorant Man, prejudiced Man.  It is a slur of us, though we bear it patiently.

            In fact, we call ourselves the albiz – A-L-B-I-Z – a word for which you have no translation, or even recognisable meaning, but it is true that the satanic compact we made all those millennia ago is our curse, for which we have been made short and slight and weak by the Beast who poses before children as a kindly old man. 

            I say again, let me repeat it: elves must die.  This statement is significant.  The ancient, proud, tall albiz never knew this fact.  They lived and lived and lived, on and on.  Man grew older as each year passed, albiz grew younger, our source of youth came at the height of darkness each season that you call winter solstice, or Yule.

To ancient Man, when he was pagan, we were a source of fear, for our dominance and youth gave us an unparalleled formidability – hence we became the elves, beings of light but somehow also beings of nightmares. 

            Let me now share with you a legend that is handed down and told among us each Christmas, out of Santa’s hearing.

There was a wise albiz called Alberad, a counsellor among albiz, who shared a premonition about death.  This forevision had come to him during hallucinations induced when stirring a certain powerful remedy.

Alberad declared:

Beware the Horned Helper, who arrived on the snowy tops with pounding hoofs and chains rattling.

If the albiz ever mouth the curse of the Horned Helper, they assure their deaths. 

As surely as Man once bit of the Forbidden Tree in search of knowledge, the albiz must never give in to superstition and fear. 

We may lose one child each year, but we have our eternality.

This was greeted with scepticism.  Many wondered what it all meant or what could be wrong with a pact that saved a child’s life each year.