“Merry…been thinking. Little tired of the snow. What say we get us a summer place somewhere nice down south?”

“Hummm,” she sighed from the rocking chair without looking up from her knitting. She had heard this idea before.

“Not getting any younger,” he continued wistfully as he walked to the window and glanced out at the reindeer barn already a deep, burgundy red in the shadows. “What do you think?”

“Count me in,” she replied without dropping a stitch.

The idea of a summer place had been developing quietly at the Claus’s for twenty years. In the early days, going back hundreds of years, most Christmas presents were simple designs constructed of wood or cloth. There had always been a lot of handwork involved. Then plastics came along in the mid-1900s and Santa deliberately became proficient in mass-production technology. One spring he even hired an efficiency consultant who skied into the North Pole in July. She made a few useful suggestions, e.g., paint all the little wagons red.

Santa was always open to fresh thinking, and over the years he made steady improvements in his operations. Even so, until the 1990s it had taken Santa and Merry almost eleven months of every year to make all the presents. Santa then blitz-delivered them to the world each December. While he had automated much of his production, he still liked to drive the sleigh himself.

By early 2005 Santa had just about decided he could (and should) take a little time off. His sense was that all work and no play were making him dull. He was losing his edge, his jolly demeanor. Merry had commented on this from time to time. That is one reason she jumped at the chance: “Count me in.”

The Claus’s started by selecting their favorite places over the years of chimney hopping in almost every village and town around the globe. After a week of on/off discussions, Santa and Merry reduced their list of twenty-some favorite places to two or three locations that intrigued them both. They decided they would try one place a year for a few years and then pick a permanent place for a true, second home. Their plan was to settle on one of the locations before the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing. While they pondered which of the chosen spots to visit first, they decided to pick criteria on which to evaluate their choices. They settled on five:

1. People. While Santa and Merry were known far and wide, they didn’t actually have many friends—and certainly no close friends in a geographical sense. They had no neighbors at all, for example. For most people the Arctic’s months of darkness, violent winds, coldness, distance from supplies, and general remoteness was not sufficiently offset by the sterile beauty, pervasive quiet, timelessness, and proximity to all northern population centers.

The closest Eskimos were a thousand miles away, and while adventure travelers visited the Pole sporadically, usually without notice, they provided meager human contact; they were always in a hurry to leave. Santa’s local helpers—scores of childlike elves—were great to have around at parties, and they did do excellent work, but they provided limited companionship as the Claus’s grew older. All in all, people—quality people—were determined to be the number one criterion for a summer place to live.

2. Nature. There are no trees or mountains at the North Pole and essentially no rainfall. The Claus’s home is on a sheet of ice that is ten to thirty feet thick. The island of ice floats on an ocean thousands of feet deep, and the nearest piece of land is 440 miles away. According to Barry Lopez, author of Arctic Dreams, of the roughly 3200 species of mammal in the world, only 23 or so live in the far north. Of some 8600 species of birds, only six or seven over-winter in the high Arctic. Lopez describes the essence of the place this way:

“On a winter afternoon—a day without sunrise, under a moon that has not set for six days…to the south I can see a thin streak of violet and cobalt sky stretching across 80 degrees of the horizon. But the ice and snow barely reflect these colors. The pervasive light here is the milky blue of the reflected moon. It is possible to see two or three miles in the moonlight; but the pale light gives nothing an edge. Except for the horizon to the south, the color of a bruise, the world is only moonlit and black sky.”

Santa and Merry wanted to add some animals, birds, and color to their lives.

3. Climate. This was a difficult subject for the pair. They had an ongoing fascination with the starkness of the two-season Arctic. On the other hand, the thought of a summer place that was warm but not too hot, moist but not humid, and that had lots of billowing clouds producing occasional rain, appealed to them.

4. Food. Santa liked to eat well; Merry did too. Among other talents, Merry was an excellent cook and something of a cuisine critic. Drawing her recipes, as she did, from all 24 time zones, there were few preparations or styles she hadn’t used in the kitchen, but she was a little tired of the 3-meals-a-day routine. As the pair thought about the future, they wanted a second home with a few quality restaurants at hand. Then Merry could ease off the cooking a bit.

5. Livability. This factor had a number of elements. They thought they would prefer a summer location that was not unduly commercialized. “I experience enough hustle from Labor Day until Christmas to last me all year long,” was Santa’s thought.

Another lifestyle element was the presence of active locals. Santa and Merry speculated they would prefer a community with a definable personality where they could get involved in interesting activities—an impossible task for them at the North Pole.

With their criteria in mind, the Claus’s settled on a plan for 2005 and 2006. They decided to start off with Lake Tahoe for a taste of high-altitude living. After that, they thought they might try Cape Cod, the San Juan Islands, and, perhaps, the Kona Coast in Hawaii, although they feared it might be too warm for them.

So, during the summer of 2005, Santa and Merry “did” Lake Tahoe—the north end, including the famous Truckee area. During the spring they had had great fun deciding on their disguises for their month-long vacation. They always traveled incognito, except in December.

For the trip south, both lost quite a bit of weight, and Santa trimmed his beard severely. Merry bought jeans and a lot of checkered blouses for herself. At Lake Tahoe the Claus’s rented a nice house and bought a brand new pickup truck. They told people they met that they were oil people from Alaska who were thinking about relocating. Santa and Merry made the rounds—concerts, restaurants, rafting, shopping, riding ski lifts, parks, beaches, and even some public meetings.

Copyright © 2009 Steven C. Brandt