I’m really tired. Exhausted. And it’s the busy season.

The family finally just left after a disastrous Thanksgiving. The grandkids said I was a propagator of tired old racist tropes because I insisted on wearing my pilgrim hat, telling the story of Squanto and how everyone lived happily ever after.

“We are eating turkey on Inuit land,” they hollered. “Besides, this is the North Pole—not Illinois—why are we even celebrating Thanksgiving, fat man?”

It was draining—I tell you, by the time the Vikings game was over, I was plastered, and it took about a dozen elves to drag me into the bedroom.

The missus was about as happy to see me in bed as Belichick was to be in Minneapolis.

Of course, the next day was a work day for me. And what a bloody headache, both literally and figuratively.

I had a venti fa-la-latte with an extra candy cane, an alka-seltzer, and half a bottle of aspirin to get me through the interviews I had in the morning.

We’re understaffed. We’re hiring. But nobody wants to work! All the young elves want to work remotely, or want more “amenities” in the workshop, and I swear, half of the millennial elves I interview insist on taking the holidays off.

Another thing: Production costs are killing me. Between AAA batteries, shipping costs to get parts up here, supply chain delays—we still can’t get enough chips for all the Switches you kids want—we’re almost as broke as the postal service.

But, like the post office, nobody will just let me retire. Seriously, the parents can do this— you don’t need me anymore.

Yet, just like the elves, parents don’t want to work. And if their kids don’t get the crap they want, they just tell their spoiled-ass kids to blame me if they don’t get the exact Lego set they asked for.

Well, I’ll tell you what: I’ve had it about up to here. I’m ready to lay off the whole work force—they can drive Uber if they don’t like the workshop—and burn the factory the to flippin’ ground.

There’s no gratitude. There’s no charity. There’s just entitlement. And bitterness. And hands out. Well, you know what, I don’t want any part of it.

I’m gonna get in the sleigh, and drive it straight to Maui, where I’ll release the reindeer into the wild—no, I really don’t give a crap that they’ll be an “invasive species.”

Invade this, Kimo!—kick off my slippahs and sip a mai tai on the lanai as I bask in the distant glow of Mauna Loa, which, like me, just couldn’t hold it in, anymore.

Trent Jonas (ho/ho/them) is a mythical being who knows whether you’ve been naughty or nice and leverages quantum entanglement to be in multiple places at once on just one night a year—as far as you know. He can be reached at tcjonas@eiu.edu or 217-581-2812.