On Christmas morning, as Santa Claus and two of his helpers returned to the North Pole, they came under attack by a group of holiday Icons angry that Claus was monopolizing the holiday glory. This year, stranded in the human world with no way home, Santa will be forced to take on the tasks for every other holiday — the Icons are on strike.

Previous Installments:

• Prologue-Christmas Day
• One-The New Year
• Two-Valentine’s Day
• Three-St. Patrick’s Day
• Four-Easter
• Five-Mother’s Day
• Six-Father’s Day
• Seven-Independence Day
• Eight-Warrenday

Nine: Labor Day

Penny crept down the lane, a somewhat pointless endeavor as a mail carrier going to Mrs. Claus’s home was in no way suspicious, but Mrs. Claus appreciated the effort. Still, if anybody actually were suspicious of her, she did herself no favors with her behavior. She clutched the mail to her chest like she was afraid it would try to escape, and her eyes flew to every home and bush on the route, as though someone would appear, pointing an accusatory finger at any moment. Mrs. Claus watched from the window, shaking her head. She was a loyal girl and a wonderful elf, but as a spy, she made an excellent letter carrier.

She sidled to the front door of the Claus home, glanced in every direction, and reached up to discreetly knock on the door. It was a noble effort, made entirely moot when Mrs. Claus opened the door seconds before her knuckles could make contact.

“Really, Penny, this is far more suspicious than if you simply came up here normally. Come inside.”

Mrs. Claus led Penny to the same kitchen table where she’d given her Edgar’s letter a few days earlier. The ream of papers was still where she left it, crumpled a bit from where she had clenched her fists, but still readable. The long and short of it was that, with Santa Claus missing in action, Edgar was exercising a nasty little clause (no relation) in the North Pole Charter. As current head of operations, if Santa was unable to complete his run on Christmas Eve, Edgar was within his rights to take command of the workshop and distribution centers of the Pole permanently. Even if Santa Claus were to return on December 26, the transfer of power would be complete and irreversible. Edgar, of course, made it seem far more charitable and magnanimous in his missive. “In the interests of the children,” he wrote, “and to ensure the continuance of the Christmas season for future generations as we have always maintained it for children in the past, I feel that this step is unavoidable.”

“Reindeer droppings,” Mrs. Claus hissed when she read it.

“What are we going to do?” Penny asked. “What he’s doing… it could destroy Christmas forever!”

Mrs. Claus laughed. “Oh, dear, don’t you watch any Hallmark Channel movies? Nothing can destroy Christmas forever. My husband will return in time to complete his scheduled Christmas Eve run, of that I have absolutely no doubt. No, that’s not what I’m worried about.”

“What, then?”

“I’m worried about this Christmas. Every child in the world, not getting what they really want, forced to make do with one of those… Edgarbots.” She nearly spat out the word, and Penny was certain she heard acid in the kind woman’s voice. “No, Santa Claus will be back in time to leave on the 24th of December, but we need to make certain that there are decent toys for him to deliver when he does.”

“How can we do that?”

“We need to get to work.”

That had finished their conversation the day Mrs. Claus received the letter. Since then, Penny had been doing reconnaissance, “stealthily” going around to different elves and asking how their work was going with the new regime in charge. It was time for her to report her findings.

“The elves aren’t happy,” she said. “I spoke to the department heads of dolls, stuffed animals, board games, and models and miniatures, and they all say that Edgar has completely gutted their quotas of toys for this year.”

“But they still have quotas?” she said.

“Yes. Even Edgar seems to recognize that some kids are going to want a teddy bear this Christmas.”

“And you say they’re all angry about it?”

“All of the ones I talked to. I didn’t talk to anyone in electronics — they’ve been too busy turning out Edgarbots.”

“Fine then. Put out the word. We’re going to have a little meeting. But don’t tell it to any elf you can’t trust to keep quiet.”

September 3, 6:15 p.m.

Gary and Eleanor walked into the apartment building, bags of Chinese food dangling from their arms, having acquired provisions for the evening. “I have to tell you, though,” he said, “I don’t really expect Santa to be there when we arrive. Labor Day is a holiday after all, and on pretty much all of them he’s been yanked away on some adventure or another.”

“I know, he’s been filling me in. Thanks for looking out for the boss while I’ve been away.”

“Oh come on, it’s Santa Claus. What kind of jerk would leave him out in the cold?”

“I’ve spent eight months out there, Gary. I think there are a lot of jerks that would have left him in the cold. And it’s not like you knew he was Santa Claus.”

He shrugged, reaching into his pocket for the key to his apartment. “I knew. Even before I knew, I knew.”

He opened the door, expecting to find his apartment empty or, at most, to find Blinky sitting alone, watching baseball, irritated that he had been left behind again but slightly grateful that there would be extra Chinese food. What he didn’t expect was to see Blinky on the couch between Santa Claus and a man wearing dusty work overalls and a construction hat. The man lifted a beer up to his lips, drops of it trickling into his curly black beard, and he tipped his hat towards Gary in salute.

“Oh. You’re here.”

“That I am, Gary!” Santa said, beaming.

“I sort of expected you to be gone. Learning your… whatever the lesson is for Labor Day.”

The man in the overalls laughed. “Gary — I can call you Gary, right?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Great. I’m Worth. Gary, we holiday icons base our days of power on what humans believe about them. My day is Labor Day. And you know what you mortals do on Labor Day?”

“Um… what?”

“You celebrate work by doing as little of it as possible.”

“AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE!” Santa and Blinky howled, raising their beers. The three of them clinked them together and they all took a drink.

“Well… great,” Gary said. “Do you like Chinese food?”

* * *

The assembly could not be held at Mrs. Claus’s home. Although she was by no means outside of her rights to call elves for a meeting with her, she had absolutely no faith in Edgar or his minions. She was certain that somebody was watching her at all times. Instead, Penny had volunteered the break room at the North Pole Post Office. It was Labor Day in the United States, and they respected many mortal holidays here. There would be nobody there for regular working hours, and the only people who would enter would be those that she and Penny had specifically invited.

It took about an hour and a half after Penny first unlocked the door before Mrs. Claus was satisfied that everybody who was planning to attend was in attendance. In the end, there were about a dozen elves, not counting Penny, each of them representing a different department in Santa’s workshop. She recognized most of them, and the few she didn’t know personally, Penny vouched for.

“Thank you for coming,” she said. “And I hope you’ll indulge me for a moment, because I’ve always wanted to say this: I suppose you’re wondering why I called you all here tonight.”

“We’re not wondering,” said Lerty, head elf from the Models and Miniatures division. “You’re here because you want to kick Edgar’s sorry behind. Well, we’re in!”

She shook her head. “No, kicking him is not what this is about,” she said. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but Edgar has so far not done anything that’s outside of his rights as head of the workshop. Santa did leave him in charge, and even though his decisions to date have been outrageous, turning violent against him isn’t the answer.”

“We couldn’t if we wanted to,” Penny said. “He’s got a security detail, and they’re still so upset about the boss that they’re taking their jobs super-seriously. They’re the only elves outside of electronics that are doing whatever he wants, no questions asked.”

“What then?” asked Greenleaf. “We haven’t even made a quarter of the toy cars we usually have done by September, and we’ve almost bumped into the quota Edgar ordered for us.”

“And you can’t keep making them? You can’t surpass your quota?”

“We went past our quota in vinyl dolls,” Gossamer said. “As soon as we did, he diverted all of our elfpower into making more of the stupid Edgarbots.”

Mrs. Claus shook her head. “So clearly, we can’t just keep going on and hope he’ll let you do your jobs in peace.”

“But the orders!” Gossamer pulled out her Elfdroid phone and pulled up a spreadsheet. “Look, we’ve got just as many orders for the dolls as we ever have, but when we show them to Edgar he just revises the numbers down. He says his job is to anticipate what the kids will want by Christmas, and that by then all they’ll have on their mind is the robot. I don’t know what he’s planning, but it’s big.”

“Yeah,” Lerty snarled. “Because every mortal kid in the world is hoping to get a box with his stupid, punchable face on Christmas morning.”

“Well, it’s obvious what we have to do,” Mrs Claus said. “We have to keep making the other toys and cut back on the Edgarbots. But how are we going to get him to agree to it?”

“He’ll never agree to it!” Greenleaf shouted “He’s got an ego big enough to sink the Titanic!”

“I have an idea,” Penny said. The elves turned to her, some looking surprised that she’d spoken up, but nobody was ready to dismiss any rational thought.

“Edgar is ignoring the numbers,” she said. “So what difference does it make if we give him the real ones?”

“Penny, dear, what do you mean?”

“Well, let’s say that Edgar orders fifty thousand toy cars, but we really need a hundred thousand.”

“A hundred?” Lerty shouted. “That wouldn’t even cover half–”

“Oh, for Santa’s sake, Lerty, it’s a hypothetical. The specific numbers aren’t important!” Mrs. Claus glared at him and he shrank down.

“Anyway, let’s say we need a hundred thousand. We can’t tell him that they’ve made fifty thousand, because he’ll take the elves off that detail and send them into making more bots.

“Okay, we’ve established that.”

“So let’s say… oh… thirty thousand or so toy cars are made, but they aren’t accounted for.”

“So we make fifty, but we only tell him we made twenty?” Lerty said. “What good would that do?”

“You could keep making them,” Mrs. Claus said. “Well past your quota. That’s clever, dear. That’s very clever.”

“We’ll have to keep a separate set of books with the real numbers,” Greenleaf said, “But I’d definitely be willing to do that.”

“Ditto,” Gossamer said. The other department heads nodded in assent.

“Okay,” Lerty said, “But won’t he notice when he walks into the warehouse and he sees a hundred thousand toy cars where there are only supposed to be twenty?”

“He’s right. We can’t store them in the warehouse,” Greenleaf said. “What do we do with them until Christmas Eve?”

Mrs. Claus smiled. “We all have houses. We have attics and basements and closets. And we all have friends with attics and basements and closets. We take the extra inventory and we hide it in our own homes. Nobody outside of Edgar’s circle is happy with the way he’s running things. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find people willing to provide storage space.”

“Fine, fine,” Lerty said. “So we keep the stuff at home. But how do we get it there? It’s going to look awfully suspicious if we all walk out of work every evening carrying boxes of toys.”

Penny smiled. “You know who’s not suspicious carrying boxes when they leave work?”

“Who?”

“Mail carriers.”

Mrs. Claus clapped her hands together and laughed. It was a silver, glittering sound, one of the most beautiful sounds ever heard at the North Pole, and it was a sound that had not been heard in over eight months.

“Oh Penny, my darling,” she said. “We just might make a spy out of you yet.”

To be continued…