How How Kong Outsourced Christmas
A Heart-warming Tale from Gafencu Men
It was that time of the year again. The tinsel was out.
Jingle Bells and Winter Wonderland endlessly cycled on the soundtrack of every
shopping mall in town and everywhere you looked there were baubles. Lots of
baubles. Yes it was mid-October. About the 16th.
For Peter Theelf, Christmas had, once again, come explosively early. In fact, his first festive get-together of the year had been September 9th, as his ever competitive company, Global Financial Tsunami, had sought to get its installment of Xmas excess in well before any other stockbrokers in the city. For 2015, they’d already booked a Reindeer-Retreat-and-Grill over the Easter weekend.
As a result, Theelf, head of corporate communication for the company, one of the fourth largest firms of stockbrokers on the floor of its building, was now on his 37th day of consecutive Christmas carousing. And the strain was beginning to tell. Today, he was destined for a quick carafe or two with a major client on the 118th floor of the International Cosmological Building (ICB).
It was 7pm and he was already five pints of Hoegaarden to the worse. Blearily, he stabbed his fingers towards the lift buttons and stepped in.
Within the elevator car, Sir Paul McCartney was apparently Simply Having a Wonderful Christimas Time. When the doors eventually slid open, Theelf delivered the kind of comic double-take seldom seen outside the tail end of Jim Carey’s move career. Just where was he?
Gone were the harsh lines, airport lighting and trestle tables of Nose Zone, the city’s highest bar, and the only Hong Kong establishment where the artificial snow came with a “Do Not Snort” warning in three different languages.
Instead, the lighting was subdued, smoky even, while the
décor was Gothic trattoria gone bad. The patrons, at least, seemed reassuringly
familiar– slumped and crumpled, but perhaps a tad greener-tinged than was the
norm. And maybe a bit scalier.
As if from nowhere, a tiny waiter appeared by his side. “Good afternoon, sir,” he said, “and welcome to Hong Warts. Just joining us for a short spell…?”
Theelf glanced round.
“How did I get here?” he bumbled.
“Floor 118 and three quarters, sir?” asked the miniature waiter. “Is, sir, perhaps a master of the arcane arts or a traveller of the unseen ethereal airways, mayhap?”
Theelf shook his head, fairly convinced he wasn’t.
“Then did, sir, perhaps partake of five and half pint of Hoegaarden on a relatively empty stomach? That tends to have about the same effect.”
Theelf was about to retreat liftshaftwards when a disturbingly familiar figure caught his eye. Slumped over a particularly precarious item of rustic furniture, his red and white livery, excess of white facial hair and ruddy complexion were unmistakable.
“Is that….?” he proffered hesitantly.
“Mr Saint, sir,” the mini maître d insinuated. “One of our more regular patrons. He tends to be something of a fixture at this time of year. Perhaps, sir, would care to join him? He is seldom troubled by others of his acquaintance.”
“Are you sure he wants to be disturbed? From what I can
gather, he seems to be, well sort of…”
“Asleep in a pizza, sir? Yes, that’s very much Mr Saint’s afternoon routine. Had you arrived slightly later, of course, it would have been very different.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He would have been asleep in a cheesecake.”
A little reluctantly, Theelf allowed himself to be steered towards the recumbent figure. Up close, he seemed less of a jolly, semi-mythical philanthropist and more a septuagenarian with a beard full of anchovies. Fame and forage fish are, indeed, fickle mistresses and seldom mix well.
Theelf coughed pointedly and hesitantly addressed his seemingly somnolent acquaintance-to-be.
“Are you…?”
“Asleep in a pizza?” asked the ruddy figure, without looking up.
“Actually,” said Theelf, “I was going to say are you Father Christmas?”
“I see,” said the figure, his tone thick with thin-crust pastry. “You’re not a journalist are you? Only I was meant to be meeting one, but I decided half-an-hour face down in a surf-and-turf-meat-feast 12-inch combo was preferable. And probably comparable.”
With this, Santa rose gravely from his peasant-style platter, with a solitary breadcrumbed prawn adhering gamely to his chin.
“They wanted me talk to them about my career. They were
going to put me on the cover. Some kind of Power interview, I believe. Would
you like to hear my interview? I had it all planned…”
Theelf nodded dumbly, quietly settling on an authentically-styled Catalonian pouffe.
“If you’re sitting comfortably, which I somehow doubt, then I’ll begin. You know, people often say it’s easy being a semi-mythical pseudo-Christian archetype of altruism….”
Although this seemed, distinctly unlikely, Theelf, manfully refrained from interrupting.
“You know, I never wanted to be seasonal distributor of festive frippery, with an unacknowledged mastery of sleigh logistics, but that was the family business.
“It all started with my father’s father, Grandfather Christmas, the original Nicholas Saint. Today, few people know that Christmas actually originated in Hong Kong. Why else though, when you think about it, did every single Christmas present received before 1992 have ‘Made in Hong Kong’ stamped on it? Answer me that.”
Sensing rhetoricism was in the air, Theelf answered him not, leaving Santa to continue.
“As part of the third generation of the Saint Foundation, I had no interest in donning the family whiskers and learning the rudiments of reindeer aeronautics. So, in 1972, I left Hong Kong and began a Restorative Dentistry degree at the University of Ottawa. I’d always been strangely drawn to teeth, see. Not long after, that I set up my own Orthadentalogical practice in Torbolon, one of Ottawa’s prettier suburbs. I don’t suppose you’ve been there, hmm? No? Pity, pity.
“By 1981 I had the world at my feet, at least that part of it that truly appreciated cost-effective enamel work in the Greater Ontario region. Then I got a call.
“Grandfather Christmas had had a minor myocardial incident, something soot and enclosed space-related, I believe. It was time for me to return and assume my place in the family business. I headed back to Hong Kong, but I was determined to be my own man and prove my worth to the business. To that end, I was determined to start at the bottom. And I did.
“On March 3rd 1982, I began work as a junior in the postroom of my grandfather’s business. I worked hard and my contribution and potential eventually won through. The very next day, I was made Group Managing Director, but very much on my own merits, you understand.
“For some reason, I now feel compelled to tell you about my love of scuba gear and charitable endeavours even though it seems a trifle irrelevant, but I’ll demur. Suffice to say, it was the golden years of Father Christmassing. Leave a kiddy a 24-piece plyboard two-colour kangaroo jigsaw and they were yours for life. Throw in a satsuma and good behaviour was ensured for another 12 months or more. Now, of course, all the fun has gone.”
Theelf fought down the urge to throw in a “How so, Santa?”, rightly feeling it somewhat unbecoming for a 40-year-old public relations professional. Father Christmas, however, continued unprompted.
“Back then, we off-shored all our production to the Pearl
River Delta and franchised our deliveries across the world. Hong Kong truly
owned Christmas. Our unrivalled logistics platform enabled us to make 1.9
billion deliveries in a 24-hour period, while also consuming 3.8 billion mince
pies and downing around 950 million bottles of Amontillado. It takes Amazon a
week to deliver the wrong colour slippers to the house next door. Just saying.
“Now, of course, it’s all been outsourced to Vietnam and Myanmar, where smaller, cheaper digital Santas merely send game upgrades to small children’s inboxes overnight. Where’s the skill in that? Tell me, what child in their right mind would prefer a new installment of Dungeon of Space Doom 3 in 3D for the X-box 360 to a satsuma? The world’s gone mad. The simple delight of a multi-piece interlocking pouched mammal puzzle has been lost on the kids of today.
“It’s also been a very bad year for our franchises. All representatives of Santa UK are in custody following a series of 1970s grotto-regulated irregularities, uncovered by Operation Christmas Tree. We’ve also had to suspend our Ukrainian deliveries and no-one has seen any of our Malaysian sleighs since early March. Father Christmasing, as we know it, is facing its gravest crisis.”
Unbidden, the breadcrumbed prawn gave into gravity, tumbling paper platewards as if to underline the solemnity of Father Christmas’ words. Santa’s de-shrimped chin quivered with emotion.
“Anyway, enough of my troubles, Hoegaarden, was it? And I think it’s time for my cheesecake…”
Peter Theelf didn’t know where he was but, wherever it was, it smelled of crushed cookies and chocolate syrup. Opening his eyes, he seemed to be asleep on his desk at Global Tsunami Financial. In a cheesecake.
According to his desktop calendar it was December 24th – his 105th day of consecutive Christmas carousing. A new record. If he hurried, though, there was still time.
Stopping just long enough to dispatch the company limo to Hong Warts, he hurtled out, heading for the nearest taxi rank.
“Take me to the nearest orphanage,” he said breathlessly. “Make sure it’s one of the more photogenic ones mind, a full four-limbed one, at the very least...”
St Brendan’s Home for Handsomely Unparented attracted all the best patrons. Sometimes, there was a queue of fading Canto pop stars, all with new CDs, waiting their turn outside. On Christmas Eve, though, it was largely celeb-free.
Theelf hurtled inside. “Quick, bring me your comeliest orphans…” he bellowed to the largely unstartled staff.
Barely minutes later, a somewhat indignant Santa was
staff-carred to the main entrance, berating Global Tsunami Financial’s bored
driver over his peremptory hijacking on this his busiest day of the year.
Theelf, however, was waiting by the entrance and quickly propelled him inside.
“Theelf,” said Santa, “I really must protest…”
Father Christmas, however, suddenly found himself lspeechless as he was ushered into the building’s main hall.
“Orphans,” he said, ”and they’re all so wholesome…except for a few at the back.”
“Santa,” said one particularly winsome specimen. “Is it truly you? For Christmas I would really like…”
“A new mum and dad and a loving home?” Santa said kindly.
“I suppose that would be okay,” said the orphan perhaps a little doubtfully, “but some small citrus fruits and a pictorial marsupial conundrum would be my first choice…”
“And me…” chorused her fellow unmummed chums.
“Bless you all,” said Santa, “you’ve restored my faith in the sesaon of good will…”
Flashing his pearliest smile, Theelf turned to the TV crew that had somehow arrived just before Santa.
“Global Tsunami Financial – the stockbrokers that saved Christmas,” he said.
The particularly winsome orphan smiled up at him. Taking his hand in her own she whispered: “Okay, mister, enough of this kangaroo crap. When do we get our Dungeons of Space Doom III? And these tiny oranges smell funny…”
