Dan's Papers -December 19, 2008 - Chubby Ernie the Christmas Chimney Sweep Elf

Delivering presents to every boy and girl in the world on Christmas Eve is a very big operation. At the North Pole, there are the judge elves, who decide who's been naughty and who's been nice. There are the e-mail elves and the post office elves, working at computers or going to the North Pole Post Office to sort through the mail to see what kids want. There are the toy-making elves and the gift-wrapping elves and the reindeer-trainer elves and the sled-packing elves and the relay elves, whose job it is to constantly refill Santa's sleigh while he is flying from home to home.

And then there are the chimney sweep elves. How did you think Santa keeps from getting his red suit from turning black when he climbs down the inside of all those dirty chimneys?

Well, out in the southwestern region of North Pole City, there is the big clan of chimneysweep elves, who work and play together and have family outings together and who, one week before Christmas, head out in little miniature sleighs to travel the world, cleaning all the chimneys ahead of time so Santa stays bright, shiny and red and white. There are about 10,000 of these elves all together. And they live next door, on one side, to a community of cookie-baker elves, who always smell of chocolate, and on the other side next to a smaller clan of sleigh-runner-waxer elves who, oh, you know what they do.

On the day Ernie the Elf was born, he began eating. And he just never stopped. He'd eat anything. He'd eat the things that were close to him and he'd eat what was far away from him. You would always see this little red headed boy somewhere, chomping away on this and that. It was his favorite thing to do. His parents worried about him, not so much about the fact that he ate and ate - that was good because it kept him healthy - but because if he got too fat, he'd never be a first line chimney sweep.

When he was five years old and off to kindergarten, he was one of the three fat little boys in class. When he was eight years old, he was the fattest kid in the class. And when the teachers began teaching the kids all the skills of chimney sweeping - hopping out from tiny sleighs hovering above rooftops and down into the chimneys to brush and brush and brush the soot off the inside, Ernie flunked. Try as he might, he just couldn't squeeze his little butterball of a body into the chimney tops.

"Ernie," his teacher said, "don't worry. If you can't be a chimney sweep elf, then you can be a chimney sweep cheerleader. You can be down lining the sleigh runways when the elf sleighs take off, cheering and hollering and waving with the other fatties."

After hearing that, Ernie went out and got himself a chocolate malted, a baked Alaska, an apple brown betty, some sugar cookies and marshmallow s'mores, and ate and ate. And that made it all right.

There wasn't much else you could tell a kid who was just too fat in those days. You could tell him to stop eating chocolate cake and French fried potatoes and ice cream and cookies and linzer tarts and maple mousse and barbecue spare ribs and spaghetti and meat sauce and cheesecake, which is just a few of the things Ernie ate on one particular day in exactly that order.

On another day, he ate spaghetti and meatballs and walnut brownies and egg nog and pork and beans and a hot fudge sundae, which Ernie ate in exactly that order one year, just three weeks and a day before Christmas.

"Ernie, we've got to leave three weeks from tomorrow to start cleaning chimneys," the leader of the chimney sweep elves said that night. Ernie was now 16, the age that baby elves became grown up elves at the North Pole. "There's still time to qualify to go. Just lose 80 pounds."

At the time, Ernie was eating a blueberry pie, some greasy lambchops, a big piece of pumpkin pie and a plate of four greasy pork chops covered in marinara sauce, in exactly that order.

He talked to his best friend, Nick, who was not only the smartest kid in the class, but someone who always stood up for Ernie, chasing other children elves away when they came over to make fun of him.

"We can do this," Nick said. "Just meet me at the gym."

And so Ernie and Nick went to the gym and they did push ups and leg lifts and arm curls and jumping jacks and after that they went out and ate corn beef sandwiches, shrimp bisque, cheeseburgers, cheesecake and onion rings, in exactly that order.

After a week of doing that, Ernie weighed even more than before. So he gave up.

Two weeks before Christmas, they had the final practice runs of the chimney cleaning brigades. Ernie was, of course, assigned to the chimney sweep cheerleader brigade and his task at practice was just to bring the whisk brooms to the elves as they began their final sessions.

Ernie was sad he wasn't going. But what could you do? He went out with Nick and had some New England clam chowder, a vanilla shake, three pieces of fried chicken, a Snickers bar and some deep fried broccoli sticks, in exactly that order.

"I'm going to figure out a way to get you on the sleighs," Nick said, between chomps.

Nick went to see the chief of the chimney sweeps, Grand Elf Zebediah, who lived in a big sugarplum castle on the northern edge of the community. He was led into the throne room. And there was Zebediah, sitting in the big chair holding the giant golden whisk broom that was the symbol of his great office.

"I was thinking," Nick said. "Some of the chimneys are small and hard to get down into, while others are very big and spacious. What do you do when the chimney is too big for one elf? Do you just have one go in and let him plop down to the bottom?"

"We would never do anything that might injure our elves," Grand Zebediah said. "What we do, with the big chimneys, is tie two elves together back to back, and have them go down that way, with one pushing against one inside wall while the other pushes against the opposite inside wall. It works fine."

"But doesn't that mean that you have more elves on hand than you might otherwise?"

"It does. But there's no other way."

"Well," said Nick, "I think there is."

And so it was that on the week before Christmas, Ernie and a whole lot of other chubby elves had really important jobs to do for what Zebediah named the Royal Brigade, (because they cleaned royal sized chimneys). Last year, Ernie did the chimneys in Holland and Ethiopia, and this year, he's been assigned the Principality of Liechtenstein, where there are all sorts of castle chimneys and mansion chimneys and palace chimneys and fortress chimneys and - guess what - he's also been assigned all the chimneys of the Hamptons, home of some of the biggest mansions with the largest chimneys in the world. Look for him. He's the elf with the big shock of red hair sticking out from beneath his little dirty white elf cap.

You'll have to stay up until after midnight to see him, of course, and with the project taking a week, there's no guaranteeing which day he'll be here.

If you see him, wave hello and thank him for keeping Santa all red and white. But other than that, my advice is to just leave a bag full of homemade ginger snaps in the fireplace for the week. On one particular morning, the bag will be gone and there will only be a few ginger snap crumbs there, and if you get down low and look up through the chimney damper, all the way up, it will be clean and tidy and you'll be able to see the sky.

Ernie the Elf had been there, and he'd done his job.

And you can count of this: When Ernie the Elf gets back to the North Pole, his job done, he'll sit down and eat a celebration meal of lasagna and pecan pie and meatloaf and cheese potatoes and goose pate and baked Alaska, well, actually baked North Pole, in exactly that order. And while he finishes up by handing out some homemade ginger snaps, he'll tell everybody about the wonderful world of the Hamptons, with its windmills, churches, saltbox houses, vineyards, potato fields, old English downtowns, fishing villages and beaches.