11 Months Until Christmas

Greetings! 11 months remain until Christmas and everything feels kind of new at the North Pole right now.

Hi, everyone! Elf Ernest here. You’ll need to excuse Elf Trixie this week. She and Mrs. Claus are both under the weather and I’ve told her to take this week off.

Besides, today is the month-marker in our countdown to Christmas and traditionally on the 24th day of each month I post a little Santa Update. I have done this for 32 years and I just love doing it.

First of all, I need to thank you. So many of you have sent in kind notes and thank you’s for all the news of last month.

I know many of you experienced issues following along on Christmas Eve as our little website here was just overwhelmed, like never before in our history. We’re both grateful and sorry for that. We’re working hard in the New Year to make sure that does not happen again.

We had issues as well over at SantaTrackers.net. In fact, the work has started over there to such a degree that some of you have written in with questions and concerns.

So, to update you, the site this week went down on Tuesday to facilitate the start of changes there. It will be up again in the next day or two.

Elf Max, who is our webmaster over there, gave a Zoom presentation to the website committee. Santa was there. I was there, as well as Elf Ed Zachary, Elf Moe, and Elf Frank Myrrh. The website committee is heading the changes being made to SantaTrackers.net.

It is a project that is going to take several months. Max hopes to have it done by April or May. But it should be available for Elf Community use within a few days, then the other changes will come.

There will be some changes and definitely upgrades coming in the months ahead to this site. But they will be less dramatic and geared more towards being able to accommodate more site visitors.

These changes are getting some attention, but not so much at the North Pole. Life here has been slow, as it usually is after Christmas. Elves and their families enjoyed the 12 Days of Christmas – which always happens AFTER Santa has delivered – and the month of January is usually a time of leisure and recreation as Santa, Mrs. Claus and the elves “recharge” their batteries.

That all pretty much ends in the next week or so. We anticipate the annual migration of the reindeer back to their homelands in the weeks ahead. It’s always sad to see them leave for the season.

But I also see their departure kind of like wiping a blackboard clean. The reindeer, for me, mark the end of one season and the start of another. By the time they return after the summer months, we’ll be deep into Christmas 2024.

I hope you stick around throughout the year to countdown these months with us. We will do our level best to keep you up to date on the news of Santa, Christmas and the North Pole.