My name is Alvin, I’m an elf. I work for the guy in the red suit with the big white beard. You know the story. I’m not here to tell you about all of the stuff you already know. I’m here to give you a little glimpse behind the scenes. Here’s the thing, the part of the story you’re familiar with is only one piece of it. You think Christmas and Santa and all the rest of it is just for the kids, and it mostly is, but I have nothing to do with any of that. That’s a different department, it’s a huge department—97% of us are in that department. Obviously, there’s more demand over there. 

I’m in the ATD, the adult toys division. Ok, I know exactly what you’re thinking, and the ATD doesn’t cover what you’re thinking. People looking for those toys don’t need elves to get them. Most of the people I deal with aren’t really looking for toys, they’re looking for a way to reclaim a freedom they feel like they’ve lost. Maybe someday someone will come up with a better name for my department, in the meantime, here’s the way it works. 

In the words of Theodore Giessel, better known as Dr. Seuss: “Adults are just obsolete children.” He had it right… mostly. Most adults lose their sense of wonder somewhere along the way, but a few hold on to a bit of the magic. These are the ones I deal with, the ones who are still able to believe. It’s easiest if I give you an example.

Her name is Jenny, she lives in Brooklyn and she’s an artist. She’s 33 and single—decidedly single, single by choice. All of her closest friends are married, and she could be if she wanted to be. She was maid of honor last month at her closest friend Tricia’s wedding. Jenny is beautiful, finding a partner has never been difficult for her. Her most recent relationship was with Jeff, she broke it off mainly because she felt a marriage proposal coming. When I say she’s an artist I mean it in the stereotypical but not so prevalent sense. She actually makes her living by selling her paintings. One of her recent works sold for $75,000, she’s got 900,000 followers on Instagram, there’s a gallery in Soho that will take anything she’ll give them sight unseen. She’s not struggling, at least not careerwise. When she started working with her current agent, he suggested she start using  Jennifer instead of Jenny. Jenny sounds like you’re in grade school, he said. She looked at him like he was crazy and said my name is Jenny. 

Last week on the 19th of December, she was walking through Soho and she stopped in front of a shop window. The window was decorated for the children, there were animatronic elves and a very elaborate electric train. The north pole depicted in miniature—it was magical if you were 5 years old. Jenny stood in front of the window and experienced it like a 5 year old. There aren’t many adults who do that. Parents come the closest when they experience something through the eyes of their children, but they’re not really feeling the magic. That day last week, Jenny was feeling the magic. She let herself go in a way that’s almost impossible for a grownup. 

Your average grownup might start to feel the magic for a second but their next thought is going to be about what’s next. Grownups are constantly thinking about what’s next, an appointment, a phone call, a meeting. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, you spend precious present moments thinking about what’s next or something that already happened. Your average adult doesn’t get lost in the magic possibility of the present moment for the simple reason that they can’t spare the time. 

Jenny doesn’t have this problem. She gets lost in the present moment several times a day. That day last week, she spent 20 minutes in front of that window, and even when she walked away she was still in an imaginary world. She wasn’t thinking about what’s next, she was thinking: what if elves are real? When she got home she took out one of her sketchbooks and some charcoal and started writing a letter to the elves. I should tell you here, because you might be wondering, Jenny is not crazy – she knows that this exercise only goes so far. She can write the letter, she can even fold it up and put it in an envelope, but she knows that there’s no address she can write on the envelope that will get it to me. She makes a short video of herself folding up the letter and posts it to Instagram with a caption that says Christmas eve, letter to the north pole. Within an hour 5,000 followers have liked the video, not one of them will sit down and write their own letter. She puts her letter on a table in front of the couch and walks to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

I wait until she’s taken the tea bag out and added the milk before I knock on the door and when she answers it she starts laughing. It’s understandable, I dressed for the occasion. I look like I just came from the mall where I was helping kids get their pictures taken with the man in the red suit. 

“Who’re you supposed to be?” She says.

“I’m an elf,” I say, spreading my arms. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Yeah, ok, why are you at my door?”

“You just wrote me a letter,” I say.

“Look,” she says, “Just ’cause I put something on Instagram doesn’t mean I want…”

I hold up a finger and she stops. Her eyes kinda glaze over, it’s like she’s hypnotized. She’s not. I don’t know how to hypnotize someone, or maybe I do. Point is, I don’t know how this stuff works, I just know how to use it. It’s like you and your computer.

“I don’t have Instagram,” I say. “I don’t even have a phone.” I put my finger down and her expression changes. In the past 30 seconds she’s gone from quizzical to skeptical to mesmerized and now… now she looks almost like she’s looking at an old friend.

“I believe you,” she smiles. “You look like someone who doesn’t own a phone.”

I smile back, because I know that when she said I believe you, she could just as easily have said I believe in you.

Her puzzled expression returns. 

“If you don’t have a phone though, how did you know about my letter?”

“I’m an elf, we just know things.” I shrug. 

I know from experience that this is an awkward stage. She’s never seen me before, and I’m standing in front of her dressed like Hermey the misfit dentist. However, the thing working to my advantage is that Jenny is a believer

“Look,” I say. “You can ask me all the questions you want, but if they’re about me I’m afraid I’m not gonna have many answers for you. I mean, I get it, if I were in your shoes I’d have all the same questions. I’m just saying, I don’t want to disappoint you. There are things I know and there are things I don’t know. I don’t even know how I got here. If you were to ask me where I came from, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I’m not sure when or how I became aware of you, but I kinda feel like I know more about you than I know about myself.”

This isn’t entirely true. There are some things I could tell her that I’m not willing to. When you’re supernatural and you’re dealing with a mortal, it’s best to stick to only what’s relevant. 

She looks intrigued but unconvinced. 

“It’s difficult to put words on.” I say. “You know how sometimes you get lost in your imagination? Like when you’re painting or even when you’re just standing in front of a shop window… you lose track of time and it’s almost like you’re in another world?”

“Yeah.” She nods. 

“That’s the world I live in.” I say. 

Jenny leans against the door frame and lets the door swing open behind her. She crosses her arms and looks me up and down. I can tell she’s still concerned but almost nothing looks more harmless than a guy in an elf suit. I cross my arms and mimic her look. I know how to look endearing. 

“How long was I standing in front of that window?” She asks. 

I smile and shrug my shoulders “you stood there for just the right amount of time.” I put air quotes on the word time.

She steps back and says “Do you want to come in?”

“Thanks, I’d love to.” I say.

“Do you know your name?” She asks.

“Yes, yes I do,” I say. “My name is Alvin, you can call me Al, it’s nice to meet you Jenny.”

“Nice to meet you Al.” She says. “So you really don’t know where you came from? You don’t know where you were before this?”

“Nope. I think there’s a pretty good chance that I’m coming from an experience that was similar to the one I’m having now.”

The room Jenny has invited me into is not large, but by Manhattan standards, it’s very spacious. She takes a seat on a chair that’s covered in a sheepskin and gestures to the couch “So you just go around answering the people who write letters to Santa?” She asks.

“I think so, if they’re over 18. Like I said, the details are murky. I have a feeling that I’m going to forget about you when I leave—and that you’re going to forget about me when I leave.”

This is half true. She’ll forget about me. I never forget about them. 

Jenny  looks up and all around the room then back at me. 

“Do you think this is really happening?” she asks.

“You seem real to me.” I say. “This feels just as real as any conversation I’ve ever had. What do you think? Is this really happening?”

“Yeah I think it is.” she says. “But I sometimes get fact and fiction mixed up.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it.” I say. “Let’s live in the moment. You go get your tea and I’ll change clothes.”

She’d completely forgotten her tea and didn’t find it strange that I was the one reminding her about it. She also didn’t question how I was going to change clothes when I didn’t appear to have anything else to change into. As soon as she passes me on her way to the kitchen, my clothes change. In a flash, I go from looking like Hermey to looking like an average guy you’d see on the subway in faded jeans and a Rolling Stones t-shirt. I’m careful to not make myself physically attractive, I don’t want her to think I’m here for the wrong reason. I kinda looked like I was in my thirties in the elf suit, now I kinda look like I’m in my fifties. Crafting your appearance is easy when you have no ego.

When she comes back into the room, Jenny pulls the sheepskin from the chair to the floor and in a fluid motion crosses her ankles and sits. She’s unfazed by my change in appearance. 

Somewhere in the room there’s a Bluetooth speaker and somehow I’m able to access it. I put on a song by U2 from the Joshua Tree album. As the song starts, Jenny closes her eyes and smiles. 

“Oooo I love this song.” She says. 

“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for—It’s like the theme of your letter,” I say. 

She laughs. “Yeah, I had no idea what I was going to write when I started. I was probably 6 years old the last time I wrote a letter to Santa.” 

“The fact that you’re 33 and still able to see things like you’re 6 is something you should be thankful for,” I say. 

“I guess,”she says. “Sometimes I wish I could live the rest of my life as a six year old. If I could, I think I’d run away to never never land.”

She looks at the letter on the little table between us and reaches to pick it up. “So, you know everything I wrote in this letter?” she asks.

“I do.” I say.

“Prove it,” she opens the letter.

I close my eyes and recite from memory:

“Dear Santa, I haven’t written for a very long time and I don’t know exactly what I want. I guess even if I did know it wouldn’t be anything that you could deliver. I think I want a different life. Have you got one of those? Would it fit down a chimney? Do you think you could have your elves build me one? 

Yours Truly, Jenny. 

I wiggle my index finger around toward the letter in her hand “And then you sketched a really nice reindeer across the bottom of the page.”

Jenny puts the letter on the floor, looks up at me and cocks her head. Her lips curl into a grin, “Did you bring me a new life Al?”

“Nope.” I smile back at her. “But I do have a question… why? I mean, what’s wrong with the life you have? I’m just curious…”

“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with my life.” she says. “I’d feel guilty if I spent one second complaining about my life, it’s not that. Not that at all, it’s just that I think I need something different. I look around and I think I need a change, I need to get out of the city.”

“What would it look like, this different life?” I spread my hands out wide in a gesture intended to make her vision big.

“I follow this girl named Tina on YouTube, her channel is called NomadicNook. A year ago she lived here in Manhattan, she was working as a lawyer, she was making decent money, and she’s the same age as me.” She pauses, and raises her eyebrows. “One day she decided she wanted something different, she quit her job, sold everything, bought a campervan and now she lives on the road. She’s someplace in Mexico now.” She brings her fingertips to the side of her head and reaches out while making an explosion sound. “Can you believe it?” She looks incredulous.

“It’s not unbelievable,” I say.

“I guess,” she says. “But a change like that? That’s a tectonic shift.”

“Eh.” I shrug. “It is and it isn’t.”

“Is this why you came here? To tell me to blow up my life?” Her expression is plaintive.

“You’re being dramatic Jenny. You look like a 6 year old asking if it’s ok to cross the street. Buy yourself a van, and get rid of this stuff”

She’s smiling big. “You really think I should?”

“Yes, I really think you should, and I’d love to tell you the hundred reasons I can think of for why it’s a good idea but I’ve gotta hit the road.” I look at my wrist where mortals wear a watch and smile at Jenny. I put my hands on my knees and scoot a little forward on the couch.

“That’s it?” she says.

“That’s it.” I say, and I stand up.

Jenny stands up too and walks with me to the door. 

When she opens it, I put my hand on her shoulder. “Good Luck Jenny.”

“Thanks Al.” She gives me a hug.

Five seconds later I’m walking away toward my next assignment when Jenny opens the door.

“I just wanted to see if you had disappeared,” she says.

“You didn’t give me time.” I say.

“I’m not gonna remember any of this?” She says.

“You’ll remember just enough.” I say.

________________________

At eight-thirty the next morning, Jenny is drinking a pistachio latte at Felini Coffee on Thompson Street with her friend Tricia. The topic of conversation is Tricia’s recent decision to start trying. Tricia is explaining how long it’s been since she took her last birth control pill, and giving a detailed description of how her libido has changed but Jenny is only half listening. Most of  Jenny’s attention is with the two little boys at the next table. They’re obviously brothers, they are so completely engrossed in a conversation fueled by their imagination that they are ignoring the hot chocolate their mom put in front of them. Jenny heard enough of the conversation before Tricia arrived to know that the brothers are talking about a world they’re making up as they go along, something to do with a spaceship and each of them has special super powers. The boys are sitting in the same coffee shop as Jenny but they are in a different world. Jenny is nodding along with Tricia, but she’s more interested in the spaceship.

At nine, Trish says she’s gotta run. Jenny stays behind and pulls out her phone. She puts in her headphones and, for no reason at all, clicks on a song by U2. She opens the browser on her phone, the page displayed is one she was looking at yesterday. It’s a page that shows a campervan for sale in New Jersey. She taps the phone number at the bottom of the page.