SANTA'S SUMMER HOLIDAY

I first posted this on a now-defunct site 4 years ago and thought it might benefit from a fresh airing...

Santa was on holiday.

You could tell he was on holiday because there was sand all around him, the sea was crashing no distance at all from his feet and his red coat showed distinct areas where he was perspiring profusely. Even his beard was matted with an unholy mixture of sand and sweat, and he really wanted to take his fur-lined hat off but knew he shouldn't for the sake of appearances.

“Mummy,” came a treble voice from a creature in shorts, “I think this fat man's dead!”

“Sshhh, Tommy,” hissed a bikini-clad voice in response. “He'll hear you!”

“Dead men can't hear, mummy,” objected the creature called Tommy. “Dead men are deaf!”

“He's not a dead man, Tommy! He's on holiday and he's too tired to take his winter coat off and put a pair of trunks on!”

“Elephants have trunks, mummy!” smirked the creature in shorts.

“Come on, Tommy!” hissed the bikini, and holding the shorts by one fidgety hand she dragged him down the beach, along by the edge of the sea where the foam occasionally made the bikini produce a little shrill scream.

“I must be wearing too much,” thought Santa, and he stood up.

“Hey, mister, you're daft wearing all that fur!” poked a pretty thing in a cotton frock.

“You what?” he asked.

“It ain't winter or anything! You're daft wearing all that fur!”

“Oh dear.”

“Are you Father Christmas?”

“What, father Christmas in July?” he snorted, wanting to keep his real self a secret.

“Yes, mister,”

“I've just put on the wrong coat,” muttered Santa, already beginning to feel confused. The trouble with my line of work, he thought, is that winters are fine and well but summers are plain confusing.

His heart was racing with exertion as he struggled up the beach and found a shop selling sea-side clothes and beachwear. He looked at a rail of light, cotton tee-shirts with breast pockets and bright patterned colours.

These are rather nice, he thought. I'll buy a couple of these. I wonder what size I take. The trouble with clothes is you have to remember what size you are, and that's not always easy. There are so many things for a man to remember...

“What size would you say I'd need?” he asked a spotty assistant who started hovering near him, anxious to make a sale.

“You're a big fellow,” muttered Spotty, and an acne pustule burst, spraying Santa with the effluvia of the bitter looking explosion, “I'd say you'd need XXXL.”

“What's that?” asked Santa, wiping a few spots of the aforementioned blister from his beard.

“Extra-extra-extra large, mister,” intoned the youth.

“I'm never that fat!”

“You are, sir.”

“Are you sure?”

“I've sold loads of tee-shirts and I reckon to be a good judge of size, sir.”

“Oh dear.”

“Do you want one, then?”

“I suppose so. And shorts. Do you reckon I need shorts?”

“Everyone wears shorts at the seaside, sir. You need to get the sea-breeze on your legs, sir, and whistling round your nethers. Make you fit for the winter.”

“Ah. Yes. I need that!”

Santa felt silly in shorts. For a start, he had no idea that his waist was as large as it turned out to be, and the shorts he bought felt really very large because his legs, which they flapped round, were really rather spindly. But he bought some anyway, and went to a cubicle and got changed.

Half an hour later a fat man carrying a huge bag containing something in red and white winter fur that smelled of sweat, and wearing a florid tee-shirt and baggy shorts could be seen making his way back to the sea and the sand.

This is the life, thought Santa.

He had just settled down on a beach-towel and had shut his eyes when the creature in shorts came by again, still clutching the bikini hand.

“He's not dead, mummy! He's changed!” the shorts chirruped.

“So I see, Tommy.” smiled the bikini.

“Who is he, mummy?” asked the persistent shorts.

“He's just a fat man,” sighed the boy's mother, “and he really ought to do himself a favour and go on a diet!”

“Or he might get stuck in chimneys, mummy?”

“What makes you say that, Tommy?”

“Because he's Father Christmas in disguise, mummy. You know he is: I saw you snoggng him under the Christmas tree last Christmas when daddy was drunk!”

“Really, Tommy! What a thing to say! Of course he isn't father Christmas, and the man you saw me with was … nobody, really, just an old friend, someone I used to know...”

“Someone called Santa, mummy.”

“Tommy! Just you be quiet or I won't buy you an ice-cream like I promised.” protested the bikini.

Santa opened one eye, and grinned. Roll on Christmas, he thought, and all the anxious mothers waiting for a few delicious moments with Mr Claus...

© Peter Rogerson 12.12.12 edited 12.12.16