A Christmas Sighting

Hurry up everyone! We have to finish before this clause gets here! Why do we have to leave every Christmas before he arrives? Because he doesn't want us to see him. Why not? Maybe he's shy.

Maybe he doesn't exist! Oh, he exists alright. I have a sighting right here in my memory bank. You mean you actually saw... Judge for yourself. It happened only last year. It was the night before Christmas, and all through the shop the toy-making droids had each come to a stop.

The toys and the gifts had been stacked up with care in the hope that Esk laws would himself soon be there. All over the world children old, children young were asleep as they dreamed of the stockings they'd hung, with a smile on their faces all snug in their beds, as visions of sugarplums

danced in their heads. But needing a wrench that I couldn't find, I went back to the shop, leaving Arto behind. No Arto, you were not there. I saw him all by myself. Don't this name.

I'm telling the story. No, where was it? Oh yes. As I searched through the shop, they came. A great clatter. And I thought, oh my stars, there is something to matter. Then the clatter got louder and got me so vexed I hid under a bench to see what would come next.

The light of the moons on the new fallen snow lit the walls of the shock with a soft, friendly glow. When there, at the window what I saw made me stare. A sleigh, and eight reindeer floating in air.

And jumping across from the sleigh to the floor was a round little man. Nothing less. Nothing more. He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot, and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.