December 24th, 2011
doen’t give up snatter! Even though we accidentally made the Antisnatter into an all-encompassing universal constant, that doesn’t mean there’s no hope any more! What about the light of the Christmas Star! He’s just a big hazy cloud, and it’s a STAR! It’s got to be bright enough to shine through the likes of him!
“I’m not so sure,” say Snattre. “We’ve been parked outside the Christmas Star for days now, and all that time I’ve been trying to make contact with the Grand Father who dwells within. Legend has it… (and also myself from the future came back in time from the future and showed me) …that inside that star grows the mighty Christmas Tree that is the seed and origin of all Christmas Spirit. The Spirit of Christmas actually grows on its great roots and branches, and buds off periodically apparently. Point is it’s really Christmassy, it’s where it all comes from right? So.
“It’s not talking to me. I’ve been trying and trying, and it just isn’t responding! I’ve used every hailing frequency, I’ve gone all the way up the snowing and even blizzarding frequencies and nothing!
“I’m concerned that the Grand Father may not approve of me any more.”
M8s go, “Don’t think that way, Snatter! It wasn’t you who did this! Your powers were given to you by the Star!”
“Hnrr hnrrr hrrrrnnrrr. Then maybe,” go the Yulicron Nebula, “The Grand Father no longer approves even of itself! I must say, this is all much more than I had hoped for when I fired off my last little spell, Santa, just before I was banished into that enchanted tea set – when I planted in your mind that simple little idea.”
“What idea?” go Snatter
“I saw your future self and his space ship, I saw your admiration for everything he had achieved, for how far he had taken his work.”
“(this was two years ago)” go Nobbly to me. “(old snatter from the future came back, don’t worry about it.”)
“All I needed to do was to put into your mind the idea of copying it. Take to the stars and begin delivering presents on alien worlds. I foresaw that your powers would force you to work until every child in the galaxy had their presents – and I don’t need to tell you that’s a lot of children – plus I imagined the universe might have some complication up its sleeve. But I hadn’t imagined anything as grand as this, all beings frozen in endless sleep and the very forces of Christmas itself giving up on themselves!
“And so I have won, Claus! Again! Yes, the inhabitants of countless worlds are beginning to wake up, and well done, they will find themselves now in possession of new belongings. But that isn’t actually Christmas, is it! They don’t know about trees and wreaths and … Dickens and stuff! They’re just going to look at those heaps of presents and have no idea what they’re supposed to be, or how they got there! They might think they’re under attack! Ha ha, next year Snatter, you may be met with artillery!
“If we have learned anything from this, it is that Christmas is something unique to Earth, you might even say quarantined there, since the whole universe starts to break down if you introduce it anywhere else! You, Santa Claus, must now wallow in this terrible new perspective you’ve forced upon yourself: Christmas exists on JUST ONE PLANET within a galaxy whose vastness you have now experienced personally. Billions of other species of intelligent life know nothing of it and care nothing for it, and so it is all entirely futile! Not one percent of the intelligent life in the galaxy cares about your silly job or about Christmas at all. You try to spread joy, but you can only spread it as far as you can throw a present!
“Ha har har ha hah harrrr! harr!”
oe nobbly, he’s so horrible!
“Yeh.. but what can we do! He’s about the size of space now!”
come on there must be something, let’s think!
“Well… uuuaaahhmm. Sorry I’m SO SPLEEPY. Ok let’s think. So the Grand Father is sulking inside him star because there isn’t enough Christmas. We need to show it that there IS enough Christmas. We need to … to like, WAVE CHRISTMAS at it. Maybe someone who isn’t so spleepy can lean out the window and wave tinsel and wrapping paper etc.”
noe, you can’t lean out of a window in space.
“oe. well, maybe we can knock on the star, and stay in the ship but sing Christmas Carols at the star and then he might come out and be all warmed and cheered?”
noe, he won’t be able to hear, christmas carols don’t travel in space
“oe. really? weird. ok, typical, all right, well… oe if only we had some sort of concentrated form of Christmas power that’s been built-up and added-to over the course of hundreds of years by being fed with presents and tinsel and stuff, and it was all a giant Christmas force that was all massively swelling with energy all gathered in one place, and we could like, open the hatch on it and BOO it out at the Christmas Star and fill it up with seasonal goodwill and cheere or something.”
yeah, if only we had… waaaaait a minute.
“Waaaaaait a minute!! I think we both thought the same thing just then! We can pro – oau – uuaaau-uuaaaah. myah. Oh I’m just too spleepy to do it! I WISH someone had got me a morning cup of tea and then I’d be fine! But where can you get a tea from when you’re stuck out here in a space ship?? You can’t just go and ask someone if you could have a — waaaait a minute.”
waaaaaaaait a minute!!
“Waaaaaaaaait aaa miiiinuuuute!! 
”