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X is the twenty-third letter in the alphabet. It’s one of the oldest letters, having come from ancient Greek where it was pronounced like the sound you make when you clear your throat because the ancient Greeks liked to give really long speeches and they would cut off interruptions by pretending to interrupt themselves, or maybe they stayed hydrated by drinking heavy cream while making their speeches because skim milk hadn’t been discovered yet. Some people think X is a redundant letter but really X is a very hardworking letter. X can mark the spot, it’s what you put on moonshine bottles and unrated films before they invented the NC-17 rating as a way of telling people, “This film is pretentions and awful and doesn’t have nearly as much nudity as you’d think.” Without the letter X there’d be no X-Games, X-Men, or X-Files. And in regular words it’s very hard working. The letter X allows you to have experiences and it’s why Billy Joel can go to extremes. It’s part of excess, excellence, exceed, excelsior! Without X your axe would be an ae which isn’t nearly as exciting or exceptional, and would barely make an excerpt where an excision was needed. X works by itself too, in X-rays and X-Mas, and xanthan gum and Xanadu where Khubla Khan built a stately pleasure dome and then Charles Foster Kane renovated it so Olivia Newton John could build a roller rink there some time later. It’s why we have xanthan gum and no one knows what that is but it’s in everything. Without X your xeriscaped lawn would be all wet, your xylophone wouldn’t be nearly as xippy, and Xerxes The Great would just be Eres The Whatever. X also starts cool obscure words you only find in really big dictionaries, words like “xenium”, which means “a present, usually food, offered to a guest or stranger,” which is a really nice word that’s so much better than xenophobia.

X is also the Roman numeral ten which raises the question, when Romans said “ex”, which was a preposition that meant “out of” did they pronounce it “e-ten”? And did that make people say, “Oh, I get it, you’ve had your xenium so now you’re leaving”? Except “ten” in Latin is “decem” so I guess really they’d say “e-decem” on their way out.

All this shows what a really powerful and important letter X is, and why it’s a total badass of the alphabet. You do not want to meet X in a dark alley, and despite what you may have heard not all Xes live in Texas. X is useful and strong, it can work with others or stand on its own, not like, say, K, which other letters will tell you is a total dickweed, frequently standing there silently doing nothing in letters like known and knife, and making C look weak even though C can crunch it or be a stand-in for S.

I’m getting away from X though so this is a good point to make an exit or, as some people say, an ex-scape.

And actually it’s the twenty-fourth letter in the alphabet. I was just seeing if you were paying attention.

This was my response on an algebra test to the question “Define X”. My math teacher Mr. Stengell wrote a note in red at the bottom of my paper that said, “See me after class!” It turned out I was in trouble and did not get what I hoped for which was extra credit.

It’s surprising how quickly people forget once the season is over. Not that I mind. In fact it’s a good thing. It’s why I don’t feel so bad about taking most of January off. I let the whole crew take the time off too. They’ve worked hard, especially  at the end of the year, and I feel like everyone deserves a break once we’re past the crunch.

The first few days I stretch out on the Barcalounger and watch TV the first few days. Mostly I catch up on movies or watch the news. Anything except the weather. You know I spend most of December watching the weather and by January it’s the last thing I want to hear about. Anyway this far north what’s it gonna be? Cold! Cold and dark. The missus will sometimes go someplace warm and sunny for the winter and, well, I’m happy to let her go, but I just don’t feel right doing that myself. Anyway I’ve already done so much traveling in December I really don’t feel like going anywhere. I like having my down time at home. I sit and go through the mail. This time of year it’s almost all junk mail, which is okay with me. I kind of get a kick out of the ads and catalogs and things, mostly addressed to “Resident”. Once we got a seed catalog and there was a typo so it was address to “Resideer”. Well, I had to share that with the Transportation Department, and we all had a good laugh about it. Not a big belly laugh, but a good heh-heh-heh. Then they ate it.

Toward the end of January I get kind of fidgety, though, and ready to get back to work. That’s when I start making my list. Sure, that seems early, but it’s a long list and I want to have time to double-check it, and December will be here before you know it. I don’t really watch my clients, you know. Even back in 1934 I thought saying I know when they’re sleeping made me sound like a big creep.

I’m not ready to put the production crew back to work yet, though, so I try to find other ways to occupy myself. Like the year I took up snowboarding. Well, I heard a lot from the missus about that. “At your age?” she said. I guess she had a point, but while I may not look it I’m pretty fit for seventeen hundred and fifty.

Oh, sure, I’ve done some stupid things too, like back in the ‘80’s when I lost a lot of weight, shaved the beard, and traded in the sleigh for a Lamborghini. Yeah, that was a mistake. Not like in 1947, though, when I took that side gig working at Macy’s.

Yep. Then it’s back to work. There’s just no rest when you’re Santa Claus.