Chapter 60 — Santa Opens Her Heart and Shares the Meaning of Christmas

“Sasha! Sasha! The pain will never end!”

Tchaikovsky wept and wept until she fell asleep right on top of Peter, and then he carefully slipped out from under her. He looked down at his damp shirt and saw it contained a perfect impression of Tchaikovsky’s face mid breakdown, the shape of her contorted mouth, the smear of her nose, her two eyes, even traces of her makeup emphasized the effect. When he sat up, he didn’t know how long he had been captive to the melodrama, but some time must have passed, because the elves were repairing the opera house floor. The red seats magically hung in the air like a lazy tornado— one revolution per whenever. With welding masks they patched back the pipes and supports and framework with elven precision. Santa stood there too, arms folded and supervising the work with solemn dignity, until she turned to face Peter.

“I’m proud of you, Peter. You could have groped her, but you didn’t.”

“Maybe I’m still going to,” he said.

Santa’s black eyebrows straightened out so flat they could be used as a level.

“Tchaikovsky had a hard life. She lost everyone that was dear to her. She died so suddenly, just a week after the premier of her final symphony, the Pathétique. There were immediate rumors that she took her own life.”

“Did she?”

Santa sat down beside Peter and rest Tchaikovsky’s head in her lap. She brushed the Russian’s dark hair away from her eyes.

“I don’t want to know. How we die doesn’t matter. Only how we live. She’s here now.”

She and Peter looked up at the cavernous hole in the ceiling at the aurora in the night sky.

“I know you’re scared, Peter. But you can’t give up on Christmas. Long ago I was a maiden of the forests and the mountains. There were no countries, no humans. Odin used to lavish me with gifts— islands rich with forests, golden gowns, opulent jewelry, eight legged stallions, slaves— don’t judge, times were different then. I was his favorite.”

“His favorite… elf? Valkyrie? Nymph? Wife?”

“No. His favorite daughter.”

“You’re… Odin’s daughter?”

Santa smiled. “You’re joking. Everyone knows I’m Odin’s daughter.”

Peter didn’t blink. The loading bar in his brain stalled at 90% and then, like a Windows operating system, somehow unprocessed back down to 70%.

Santa’s smile dissolved. “You’re not joking.”

Peter held his head as if trying to contain an explosion. He muttered to himself that he was speaking to Odin’s number one daughter right now. Santa Claus is a Norse princess. A demigoddess? A full goddess?

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“For æons I feasted in the fathomless halls of Ásgarðr, celebrated Vetrnætr and Sigrblót under Yggdrasil’s golden gaze, toured round and round the elven realms— they like to dance and smoke. I pub crawled among the dwarves— they like to arm wrestle and drink, and leg wrestle, and wrestle-wrestle, but mostly drink… skinny dipping with the nixies of Lesbi, cracking sartyrs’ heads in for trying to defile me. I lost my license once after I flipped my sleigh on the Bridge of Bifröst. Every day was a wild adventure of hunts, midnight bonfires, gifts, and sacrifices. Each season, each celebration, each ritual, rolling endlessly one into another, forever.

“It should have been heaven, and yet it was not. An eternity is a long time to do anything. You can even grow weary of bliss. The songs, the prayers, the runesteins, all this wealth and power felt meaningless to me. I began to feel a secret voice whispering ‘you are guilty’ into my ear. I had wasted my life in idleness, and there is something within us that will not let us be idle and happy. It creeps up on you, like a sickness. Every day becomes poisoned, and you don’t understand why.

“Odin noticed my melancholy and tried to alleviate it. More parties, more extravagant gifts. I was given entire kingdoms, whole swaths of Miðgarðr, the riches were boundless, but still nothing brought me happiness. Odin didn’t understand. It was not things that I wanted, but purpose. So he said, ‘If my gifts are so meaningless to you, if not even a golden blossom from Yggdrasil can make you smile, then cast them all into Niflheimr, and be rid of them. Be rid of all my love, and cast yourself into Niflheimr too.’ And he galloped off on Sleipnir.

“I went out alone into this wintery world, no longer wanted, no longer loved, unsure of where to go and what to do. I came upon a tribe of humans. They were destitute and starving, digging in the snow in search of wild vegetables. So I gave them food and wine, I gave them clothes, I gave them tools, I gave them livestock. All these things that I didn’t want… it made them rich with joy. And then something amazing happened. I too felt happiness. All this time I thought accepting gifts was supposed to make me happy, but the key was giving gifts. If only you could have been there and seen their faces… how happy they were. How they hugged me, and thanked me, and bid me stay with them, but I knew that there were more humans like them out there who needed me.

“And the children… it’s so easy to make them happy. All they want in life are such small things: a bauble, a video game, a cell phone. But adults, they want things I can’t give. Love, good health, lost siblings, parents long gone. I wish I could wrap these things in a box and give them away, but I can’t. One day the kids will grow up and be like us, finding joy in nothing. Until that day comes, we should make them happy. Give them whatever dumb toy they want while it still means something to them. That’s why we can’t surrender to the Holy Spirit’s demands. To cancel Christmas is to cancel happiness itself. You can feel it too. The joy of giving— in making others happy.”

Santa’s luminous eyes locked onto Peter, to measure his reaction. He didn’t notice her swirly-twirly superhuman gaze at first, but when he did he flinched. He was not used to girls studying him so intently— especially girls with eyes so blue they nearly glowed in the dark. Santa did not shy away. She inched closer, her face nearing his. Was this the moment before a kiss? Peter wondered. Was Santa inviting him to kiss her? With suspicion, he moved toward her lips, expecting her to jump back like ‘Whoa! What the fuck?’ But she did not recoil from this intimacy. Peter leaned even closer, past the boundary of personal space, where kisses were imminent, and still Santa said nothing. She also didn’t close her eyes— remaining focused on him, as if daring him to go for it. Do you dare, Peter? Do you dare give Santa Claus a smooch on her perfectly lip-glossed mouth?

When what should happen but— cliché of all clichés— a blinding spotlight shone directly into their eyes, interrupting the romantic tension.

“Golly gee humbug!” Iumina cried. “What the Kwanzaa happened in here?”

Iumina scanned the room with her camera, narrating the devastation as she tiptoed past Peter, shining her spotlight on every ruined thing in the opera house.

“Santa, Peter, are you okay? What a terrible disaster! How awful! Poor Tchaikovsky! Gasp! Look at that hole in the ceiling! It could collapse at any second! Hashtag thoughts and prayers to the North Pole! Be sure to subscribe and smash that like button if you want to see more heinous footage of this horrible tragedy! Bye—ee!”