Santa solves production problem at North Pole

How can Santa make all those presents? It is a well-known fact that the “elves” make the presents — now. It wasn’t always that way.A long, long time ago, in a place where nobody knew who he was and people minded their own business, Santa, in a small workshop, was busily turning out toys in preparation for Christmas. In those days, there were not so many people in the world. It seemed that every time the population started to grow... poof! Along would come another plague or Crusade or something. So in those days, Santa made all the toys himself. History marches on. Many wonderful advances were being made in science (gunpowder), the arts (drawings to make guns) and medicine (treatments for gunshot wounds). When people got sick, instead of just saying things like, “Oh well. I guess Roland won’t need his nice, new plow horse anymore. Help me hitch it to my wagon,” they would bleed them until they got better. People would later call it the Renaissance. Imagine their chagrin when they had to write this down. Spelling was not their strong point.Santa was putting in so many hours that he began to produce shoddy merchandise. For awhile he tried some shortcuts, like leaving just fruit and nuts for the children in their shoes, but the next year he would find the fires in those children’s chimneys had been built up fit to roast an ox. He took the hint. Santa needed a workforce.One evening, while Santa was reading his “Big Book of Fairy Tales, Mythology and Religion – A Comparative Study,” he found something interesting in the tale of the first jack-in-the-box. In this story, a boy, who had been very bad indeed, had been magically imprisoned in a dark box and could only come out for brief periods when a magical tune was played. Here we have the origins of Santa’s naughty and nice lists. All he had to do was pick up the boxes on his return trip and he had a new supply of recruits for the workshop. This also explains why adults, wise to Santa’s wily ways, distance themselves from the legend.So how does a child know if he is on the naughty or the nice list? Well, one way would be to check packages carefully at Christmas before just ripping them open. Are they from Santa? Or do they not have any “from” sticker on them at all?Footnote: So how does Santa travel all that distance in one night with all of those presents? Why do elves have pointy ears? When we think you are ready, we will tell you.Beam me up, Scotty. Bill Abrams resides and waits for a visit from Santa in Pine Plains.