Reincarnated as the Spirit of Christmas: Building a Harem of Beauties While Rediscovering the True Meaning of the Season

Everyone remembers the magic of Christmas morning, but I can’t help feeling like the world stopped believing in miracles a long time ago. The North Pole isn’t what it used to be. Maybe that’s true for all of us, given a few centuries, but I swear the place itself holds a little less magic every year. The air is as sharp as the edges on the new line of tablets the kids keep asking for. The workshop hums and rattles with conveyor belts, stamping presses, sorting arms, all bathed in the harsh flicker of overhead fluorescents. Gone are the warm lantern glows, the laughter, the smell of fresh sawdust and gingerbread baking. I barely recognize this place. I sit hunched over the master sorting table, a plywood relic that’s survived more Christmases than I care to count. There’s a mountain of letters before me, each envelope bright and hopeful, every poorly formed loop and scrawl a testament to a child’s persistent optimism. My beard, once a pristine glacier white, now bristles patchy and gray, flecked with coffee stains and, I’ll admit, the occasional cookie crumb. I rub my eyes—twice, because the first time my hand misses and hits my nose. I used to blame age for the shakes, but it’s more than that. The magic that kept me spry, that hummed along my nerves like a thousand tiny sleigh bells, it’s dimmed. Some days it feels as though I’m winding down, one turn of the key at a time. I reach for a letter at random. The handwriting is neater than I'd expect from a child and the wish list sprawls on for four pages. First item: The UltraGamer Quantum Console, with two terabytes of “fastest possible” RAM and extra downloadable content unlocked. I grunt. The elves tell me this one's the top seller among ten-year-olds in three continents. I make a note on the order sheet, slide the letter into the finished pile, and reach for the next. And the next. And the next. Phones. Laptops. Smartwatches. The occasional drone. Everything with a battery, nothing with heart. By the third hour, my movements are automatic. Read, sigh, notate, file. Letters requesting “just one day with dad” or “mom to stop being sad” go in a special bin. Those are the hardest, the ones I want to answer myself, but there’s only so much even I can do with a world this big and broken. The rest, the gadgets and clothes and overpriced collectibles, I pass into the fulfillment system, which digitizes my notes and sends it somewhere out on the floor, where elves race to meet quotas, checking screens and barcodes, never pausing to breathe in the moment. The magic’s gone thin, stretched over too much want and not enough wonder. A commotion ripples through the glass walls of the executive office. The elves used to sing as they worked. Now their faces glow blue with the reflection of screens, their pointed ears quivering not with excitement but with stress. They trade memes instead of cookies. Some call it progress, but I’m not convinced it’s an upgrade. I stand, stretching until my vertebrae pop, and wander to the window overlooking the factory floor. Conveyor belts snake between rows of workbenches, each manned by a pair of elves in identical overalls. They look up only when a buzzer signals a jam; otherwise, their heads stay down, hands moving with mindless precision. No one tells a joke. No one sneaks a sip from the peppermint schnapps flask hidden behind the tool racks. It’s all process and productivity now. The elves don’t look at me with wonder anymore. Maybe they shouldn’t. Maybe I’ve become just another supervisor, clipboard and all, keeping time instead of giving it. Progress, they call it. But what are we progressing towards? Efficiency, or extinction? A young elf, pushes up his plastic-rimmed glasses and approaches my office. “Sir, we’ve got a snag in the electronics line. Do you want to approve a substitution?” His voice is bright, efficient, as if he's afraid to waste my time. I resist the urge to call him “my dear boy” and settle for a nod. “Show me.” We weave through the aisles, dodging forklifts and overburdened carts. The floor smells of ozone and solder, the candy cane perfume replaced by the sterile scent of plastic wrap. At the far end, a knot of elves clusters around a jammed conveyor. I squeeze past, pretending I still command the respect I once did, and inspect the problem. A misfit batch of smart dolls, each programmed to recite over six hundred annoying phrases in fourteen languages, has piled up at the end of the belt. One doll’s head has rotated a full one-eighty, eyes staring blankly up at me. For a moment, I expect it to blink. “Used to be, if a doll looked at you like that, it meant someone had poured their soul into the eyes,” I say, not caring if the elves understand. The junior elf shrugs. “The machine isn’t calibrated for the new head mold. We can run a patch overnight.” It’s always patches. “Go ahead,” I say. “Don't worry, they'll turn out perfect.” I know he means that they'll all turn out exactly the same. But that doesn't seem like perfection to me. They'll be perfectly soulless. I continue my circuit, past the assembly lines to a shadowed corner of the workshop. Here, dust collects undisturbed, motes spinning in the weak light from a lone, flickering bulb. I brush my fingers along a workbench covered in abandoned tools: a whittling knife, a file, a glue bottle that’s gone crusty at the tip. For a second, the old urge sparks in my chest. I sit and grab a lump of pine from the scrap bin, blade resting easy in my palm. The carving comes back to me easily, every curve of the blade feels like remembering. This used to be who I was—the maker, not the manager. When did my hands forget how to love the work? When did I? The grain of the wood, the rasp of steel—it’s slower than a 3D printer, but infinitely more satisfying. When I finish, the sled I've created is lopsided and crude, nothing I’d let past the old quality checks. Still, I run my thumb along the runners, remembering the first time a child held one of my toys and lit up with genuine surprise. Back before the world expected miracles on demand. I laugh at myself, the sound echoing thinly in the empty space. Ho. The other two hos catch in my throat, as if I’ve forgotten the rhythm. I dust off my coat and move to the old shelves along the wall. Between shrink-wrapped boxes and gleaming plastic towers, I spot a relic: a wooden train, hand-painted in chipped red and green. I pluck it from the shelf, the weight of it surprisingly heavy in my palm. One of the last things we made by hand, before the pivot to mass production. The paint smells faintly of cinnamon, a trick I learned from a clever elf named Minty, long since retired to a sunlit beach town down south. I turn the train over and over, the wheels sticking a little in protest but still rolling. It just needs to be broken in. Outside, the wind howls against the workshop’s steel ribs. Somewhere, a jingle bell rings—a real one, not the sound file piped through the PA. For a fleeting moment, I imagine the world still needs me. The thought is gone as soon as it comes, replaced by the endless grind of orders to be filled, quotas to meet, expectations to manage. I hold the train up, thumb a chip of red paint, and slip it into my pocket. Maybe this is enough. Maybe it has to be.