First Encounter

As you have no doubt read in my blog before, Blitzen saved my life. He found me on the verge of freezing to death after I had been caught in a major snowstorm, deep in the forest, and in the middle of the night. That was my first encounter with a talking and flying reindeer. Before that fateful night, I had believed such things to be the superstitions of old men and creatures of fairy tales. But Blitzen was real. And he opened up a whole new world for Mrs. Claus and I.

Blitzen returned me that night to Mrs. Claus. Later he told me that he didn't think I would make it through the night. He stayed with us in our home in Drobak, helping Mrs. Claus nurse me back to health. By mid-afternoon the following day, thanks in large part to Blitzen, I was beginning to feel myself again. I tried to re-pay Blitzen but he would have none of it. He said that my recovery was a priceless reward for him. But I did make him promise to stay in touch.... I knew he would be a life long friend. Blitzen did stay in touch. Over the course of the following year, he dropped by once a week to visit with us. He accompanied me on my commutes to and from Oslo. We became close friends.

I knew that if there was one talking and flying reindeer, there would certainly be more. But I never asked Blitzen. I understood his need to remain discrete about his abilities. I wanted to respect his privacy. So it was almost a full year later before he ever mentioned anything about his friends or family. And it was another few months before he finally introduced Mrs. Claus and I to all of the other reindeer. What a treat that was!

And eventually, several years later, I was able to re-pay Blitzen for saving my life. The reindeer were being threatened by new development as Oslo expanded and logging increased. Once Mrs. Claus & I became aware of the situation, we promptly used some of my inheritance to buy several hundred square kilometers of land in the northern most part of Norway so the reindeer could live safely & peacefully. That purchase was the first parcel of what is now the full North Pole territory. Mrs. Claus and I fell in love with the land and built our own cabin that we used as a weekend retreat from the shops in Drobak and Oslo. It allowed us to visit regularly with the reindeer.

It was during these weekend visits that we first noticed what we thought to be young children milling about amongst the herds of reindeer. Whenever I would go out to check on the children... concerned because no people lived within a hundred kilometers of our property borders... they would disappear quickly into the woods. The reindeer all assured me that I must have been hallucinating. This happened several weekends in a row. If Mrs. Claus had not also seen the children, I surely would have thought I was going mad. As winter set in, we did not see the children again. By spring, I thought no more about them. But Blitzen, my trusted friend, had not forgotten about the children...

Blitzen knew about my family fortune. And more importantly he knew about my desire to share my good fortune with the less-fortunate. He knew about how I followed my father's tradition of anonymously leaving small bags of gold coins on doorsteps on Christmas Eve. He knew that I had expanded the tradition to secretly pay-off debts of those that had suffered misfortune and to leave some of my hand-crafted toys with their children. I had shared with him how I wished I could extend my reach beyond the Drobak & Oslo areas to help the many others across Scandinavia. And that is why that following Christmas season, on the verge of winter, he told me about the elves.

The elves are human despite what many people may think given their small stature and the rumors of their magical powers (By the way, they aren't anymore magical than you are... it is the stuff of urban myths). They are a race descended originally from the same Siberian-based tribe as the eskimo people. A thousand years earlier, they had migrated north, deep into the Arctic Circle, before turning west and southward and settling in the forests of present-day Norway & Sweden. Living in the forest, they quickly became skilled craftsmen capable of making virtually anything from the timber they cut to make their homes, fuel their fires, and craft their tools. They adopted the reindeer and the reindeer, in turn, adopted them. They forged a deep and critical partnership. It is likely without each other, neither would have survived some of the winters they were forced to endure. For years they were a lost and forgotten tribe altogether; however, a hundred or so years before Mrs. Claus and I built our cabin in this remote land, a missionary... hopelessly lost and on the verge of starvation... stumbled upon the elf village. They nursed the missionary back to health. During his stay, he shared his faith and after hearing the Good News for the first time, the elves were so excited that they immediately broke into celebration. A feast was prepared, music played, elves danced & sang, and gifts were exchanged as was the tradition for all elf celebrations. The missionary told them that it reminded him of how Jesus' birthday was celebrated in other parts of Europe and the Middle East. Hearing this, the tribal elders declared that the birth of Christ would be celebrated in such manner every year. The missionary, fully recovered, set back on his quest and eventually found his way to Oslo. He shared the story of the elves but no one believed him, discounting it as the hallucinations of a starving man. The elves remained forgotten for another hundred years... until Blitzen introduced me to them.

Blitzen knew the elf traditions of celebrating the birth of Christ. He knew about my Christmas Eve traditions. And he knew that with the help of the elves and the other reindeer, I could realize my desire to help even more people. That first Christmas together with the elves, Mrs. Claus & I celebrated with the elves who hosted us in their village. We shared in their traditions. I shared my vision with the tribal elders. And that very Christmas night, we all - the reindeer, the elves, and I - made a commitment to deliver gifts - money, food, tools, & toys - to the deserving and less fortunate people of Norway the following Christmas Eve. From there, the tradition grew....