Fact: Last night I witnessed Santa fire thousands, if not millions of elves. Right there from his kitchen table.

I feel vindicated. In my last column I told of a rumor out of Flight Command about elves losing their jobs and I caught some flak for it. Well, those guys in Flight Command were not kidding. I saw it happen.

It was totally a chance thing.

I was at the Claus residence because Mrs. Claus invited me to come over after class yesterday so she could show me how she decorates her chocolate butter Easter eggs.

This was a thing for me when I was little. My Mom and my Grandma had this little tradition of making and decorating chocolate Easter eggs and I told Mrs. Claus about that one time so she invited me over because I told her that while I’m a sucker for chocolate butter I have no skills whatsoever with decorating those eggs.

So there I was, making a total mess of this really rich chocolate butter egg, and in walks Santa.

He’s got his open laptop in one arm and he’s talking to Elf Roger as he walks in, and Roger carried in his open laptop as well. Both Santa and Roger were so deep in conversation that neither even said hi when coming into the kitchen.

Santa just grabbed a finished egg and bit into it like an apple. I’ve never seen that in my life.

I usually just slice off little pieces of these chocolate butter eggs and eat it slowly over a period of time because it’s so rich. But not Santa. He just put his mouth on it and chomped away. Mrs. Claus saw that and chuckled a little bit and said to me, “My kitchen, his house!”

Santa heard that. He said, “Hey, it’s good to be the king!”

Then he went right on talking to Elf Roger again. They were talking, as they have all year long about this website.

In so many words, the gist of it was that Santa wanted to remove inactive elves from the website and Roger did not want to do that.

I heard Santa say of one particular elf, “Look, she’s got some problems. As she has gotten older she has developed quite an attitude and she is now bullying her little brother. This is not the behavior of an elf!”

Mrs. Claus looked up from her decorating and gave Santa a stern look. “Santa, she’s eight.”

He stopped talking and shook his head. “Okay, he said. I’ll give her one more chance”.

Mrs. Claus looked at me and laughed again. “He’s the head of this house, but I’m the neck!”

I was just trying to remain as small as I could. I was there for the chocolate butter.

The last time I overheard a conversation about the plans for this site I wrote some stuff and got in some trouble. Now I was getting an earful and in my head I was thinking what to do with all I was hearing. Both Santa and Roger know how I feel about what I write here. Roger was one who did not like that I said what I said.

And here I was witnessing the so-called rumor.

Finally, after a lot of back and forth, Santa said to me, “Trixie, what do you think?”

Well, it was a fair question. Not only did I write about firing elves but I’ve also put in hours and hours of work writing for Elf University and taking assignments from Elf Harold. Nobody is working harder than Elf Max on all this stuff but there are lots like me who are putting in the hours behind the scenes.

Elf Max was “there” on Zoom – Roger had called him when Santa said he wanted to “purge the system of deadbeat elves”.

I could hear Elf Max breathing on the Zoom call – stress, I think – but he wasn’t saying much. Here was Roger, his boss, arguing with Santa – Roger’s boss! – over what poor Max was going to be charged with doing.

But here is what the amazing thing of this moment really taught me:

Santa does not have a naughty list. That has been talked about on the official North Pole websites for years. But Santa and even Mrs. Claus seemed to know every elf they were talking about. They even talked about some of you, the more active elves, like they know everything about you.

In the course of the conversation I heard Santa or Mrs. Claus mention Elf Peppermint and Elf Lachie and Elf Cookie Dough. Santa says you guys are the reason he wanted to get rid of the inactive elves.

Hold on – let me clarify something here. He wasn’t “getting rid” of them.

The more we talked the more Elf Roger’s argument seemed to take hold. Santa wanted them out of the Elf Community for the sake of the Elf Community. They settled not on firing them but on changing their status from North Pole elves to Freelance elves.

Roger insisted that they be sent an email notifying them of the change and giving them an opportunity to come back if they want to.

Mrs. Claus supported this position and Santa finally agreed.

Anyway.

Long story short, if things look a bit lighter around here today its because a lot of elves of record were taken off the record last night.

I was part of it. As Santa and Roger talked and made decisions, Elf Max quickly got overwhelmed. I was put on Roger’s laptop to help him actually sort through all these elves who were on the chopping block.

And we chopped and chopped and chopped.

Santa and Roger were the judge and jury and me and Max were the executioners.

We spent five hours working on it and Santa called it a “good round #1”.

As Santa later walked out the door – grabbing another chocolate butter egg, by the way – he turned to me and said, “Is this going to show up in the Santa Tracker Herald Star tomorrow?”

I just nodded.

Roger just looked at me and said, “Good.”

So, just to validate everything I have said above, I’m sharing a screen shot of something new coming Saturday that I actually got excited about.

This doesn’t have to directly do with the elimination of elves but the fact that we will no longer have legions of inactive elves in our systems here at SantaTrackers.net means that our numbers will be more realistic. Santa was quick to point out that NOW, not Christmas in July, is the time to clean things up. He said he wants those elves on SantaTrackers.net to know that all of our changes to the website are for the good of those elves who are active and who intend to do well as elves.

Here is a screenshot of a new personal points summary and I think it’s really cool.

There are three such screens and you guys will see them on Saturday – along with a bunch of new really neat features:

See?

This column is not just about rumors. It’s about the true stories of life in the jungles of the North Pole, such as they are.

Santa is one hands-on boss, elves. I saw it last night in spades.

He knows who each of us as elves are. He doesn’t need lists. He’s got – and Mrs. Claus, too – a steel-trap mind. He knows us.

And I think he’s fueled by chocolate butter. No lie.