***
As St. Nick’s popularity blew up the following years, the children of the world decided it was time to give a little something back to him. They were certainly grateful for all the gifts that he’d bring them each year, but they were beginning to lose satisfaction. One-way giving didn’t carry the appeal for them that it had in the beginning. They didn’t know how to give back, of course—if any of them knew how to make toys, then they wouldn’t have needed him in the first place. But then the world changed. Just as St. Nick needed a spark to begin the cycle of charitable giving, so, too, did the children, and their giving began with one child setting the precedent.
St. Nick hadn’t quite gotten used to air travel, even after five years, so he was prone to dizziness and air sickness. On the night of his fifth annual gift delivery, he had lost track of where he was flying, so he could’ve been anywhere. But he kept to his plan, and dropped in on any house that he could find with a stuffed animal lying in the yard, the signal that a child lived there. That night, the night that the world changed, had been full of the standard routine—swoop down, say hello to the children who were standing outside waiting for him, then toss them whatever gift from the bag they wanted, then fly off to the next house.
But one household dared to be different than the rest that evening. The child who lived there waited for him, as was the tradition for the time, but he wasn’t alone. He had with him a plate stacked with cookies and a glass full of milk. When St. Nick tossed the child a small box that released a clown after turning a crank a few clicks, the child tossed him the cookies and milk. St. Nick was reluctant to try this unusual food at first. But the child, in his eagerness to make his gift-giving hero happy, stared at him with wide eyes and an expectant face, and St. Nick, who had come to realize that he liked the children of the world, did not want to disappoint the one standing before him, so he ate the cookies and drank the milk. And it was the greatest thing he had ever eaten.
“You’ve done good, kid,” he told the boy with a smile. “Real good.”
And the boy, thrilled that St. Nick not only knew his name but liked his gift, ran into the house screaming to his parents that he had just gotten approval from Santa Claus.
The following year, St. Nick discovered that word about this exchange of gifts had gotten around, and now most of the children he visited had milk and cookies waiting for him. Because he couldn’t refuse those innocent faces, he took and ate every cookie he was offered and drank every glass of milk he needed to wash it all down.
The next day he was very sick, but he decided it was worth it for the children. And he couldn’t deny his newfound love for milk and cookies.
Then came the shocker. He realized he was moving a lot slower than usual.
The entire next year, he sat at his bench, building toy dolls for the following start of winter and the subsequent delivery, and forgot that he had a gym. When it came time to make the next delivery, word had spread across the globe that Santa Claus ate milk and cookies, and every home he visited had a plate waiting for him. By the time his deliveries ended for the year, he would come home sick to his stomach.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
The problem St. Nick faced now was a problem with image. In spite of his early obsession with gym equipment, he had somehow gotten very, very fat.
When he saw himself in the mirror for the first time in years, surprised St. Nick couldn’t believe his eyes. His godlike body had been blown out of proportion to such an extreme that he had thought he was looking at himself through a trick mirror. Except, he wasn’t. He looked down at his feet to discover that he could no longer see them.
He fell into a depression by January.
Martha tried to cheer him up, but he wouldn’t listen to her. She kept trying to tell him that she still loved him, but he didn’t believe her. He said he’d have to grow a beard now just to hide his fat face. He fell into a stupor. He spent many nights sleeping when he should’ve been working. Even when he tried getting onto the treadmill to reverse the negative effects of eating a ton of milk and cookies in one night, he found it very difficult to run. Part of it was due to him never repairing it after one of the reindeer had broken it. But even if it had worked, he couldn’t move faster than a jog. The sudden pull of belly fat jiggling up and down felt like his stomach was trying to rip his chest off his body. It was very uncomfortable.
He was ashamed of himself. And he didn’t want to be seen this way. He went into hiding for the rest of the year.
When December rolled back around, and it was once again time to prepare for delivery, St. Nick refused to come out of his room.
“I’m disgusting,” he told Martha, when she tried to lure him out of his room.
“It’s all in your head,” she told him.
“No, look at me. I’m a tub. And please don’t look at me. I’m a tub.”
“But, honey! What of the children?”
“What of them?”
“If you don’t deliver your gifts to the children, their hearts will be broken.”
“My heart is broken.”
Martha had done all that she could to urge him on, to get him into that sleigh, to deliver those gifts to those sweet little children. But he ignored her. He was going to spend the rest of his days hiding from the world. He couldn’t let anyone see him this way.
She had grown frustrated with his reluctance, and did all she could think of to get him out of bed and moving again. But all she could say to him was, “Remember the children.”
St. Nick did remember the children. They were the ones who had driven him to this awful state of obesity, the little jerks.
He was determined to give up the charity. The people he had tried to help had turned around and ruined him. He thought they were horrible little trolls for making him so miserable. Then he thought the elves were horrible little trolls for encouraging their bad behavior in the first place. They were the reason he was even able to get so many toys out to the world. Then he resented Martha for planting the seed of delivery in his mind. She was the real reason he had gotten so fat. If she had just kept her mouth shut, he’d still look like Adonis.
As December marched on, Martha had enacted a move of desperation in order to get her husband moving. It was really the only move she had, and it was a long-shot. But she went for it. St. Nick had spent the year falling into despair, and she had to get him out.
“This is who you are now,” she said. “Yes, you were once a thing of beauty. But you were also miserable night and day. You threatened your elves’ lives on many occasions. You ignored me for the sake of your own body. You lived a life of isolation in order to preserve your youth, and none of it made you happy. None of it made you who you are today. The children, they made you who you are today. The gifts you give them, they made you who you are today. And though you may not be happy with your body now, the children, I can tell you, do not care how you look. They care that you show up and bring them happiness. So, get out of bed and show them happiness before I divorce you and marry a young Austrian bodybuilder.”
It took a little time for it to sink into St. Nick’s mind, but he understood his wife’s point. His life had changed from isolated misery to one of family and happiness, and his body was now fat with it. His overstuffed belly was a reminder that he was no longer grumpy St. Nick, but jolly St. Nick, and jolly and belly sounded a lot alike. But more importantly, he had become Santa Claus, the children’s winter hero, and Santa Claus was a fatso, dangit!
So, Santa Claus got into his sleigh that year, determined to find his happiness again, determined to make the most of his new girth made by cookies and milk. And he set off to continue his now lifelong tradition. And he made sure that he didn’t change a thing. Well, one thing: he hired a doctor to keep a tab on him. He didn’t want to die of a heart attack, after all.
Actually, two things: he wanted to start sneaking into houses via the chimney in the dead of night so that no one would have to see him, and so he wou
ldn’t have to feel guilty telling the children to screw off the next time they tried to ram milk and cookies down his throat.
Of course, they figured out his new plan and left milk and cookies on the mantelpiece instead. He decided he’d just have to get used to being fat. He’d pay them back by keeping a naughty and nice list.