In fact, she assumes this is a totally unimportant event until a young-looking man in a funny hat appears in her bedroom.

"...hello."

"What are you doing here and how did you get into my house."

Lev has talked to exactly one human in his entire life and has no idea how to explain things to them.

"--Well, I came in here by magic, and I came here because you are now Santa Claus."

"What??"

"Because you killed Santa?" Lev tries. "And when you kill Santa then you become Santa."

" - I didn't kill anyone? Also that's insane?"

He's wearing a weird hat and claiming he broke in with magic, she doesn't actually know why she's trying to reason with this burglar, this is dumb.

Evidence. That is the thing Lev would want in her shoes, evidence.

He considers snapping his fingers and summoning a snowglobe into his palm, decides that might be sleight of hand, and instead snaps his fingers and teleports them to the Moon.

" - what is this?"

Not a burglar, OK, not a burglar, this is new.

"Well, I figured I had to show you that magic was real, so I had to do something that I could definitely only do with magic, and I decided to teleport you to the Moon because I like the Moon." 

The Earth is half-full before them in the sky.

"Yeah. OK. That makes sense," she says, weakly. Most of the rest of this does not make sense, but honestly at this point whatever.

"So you, Karen Teller, killed the previous Santa and you are now Santa Claus."

"I assume if I tell you that Santa isn't real that's just going to make me look really dumb at this point."

"The previous Santa believed in the wonder of childlike faith, so he required us to use our magic to conceal our existence, so that children would believe in us even though there was absolutely no evidence we existed."

He is proud of himself for managing to say that almost entirely without disgust in his voice.

"OK. Sure. Fine. But I didn't kill anyone."

"You gave Santa a book on roof repair. He lost his balance, fell off the ladder, and died."

"That's not killing someone!"

"Well, there's not anyone else who caused his death more."

"So what, every time Santa dies the Santa magic or your weird Santa legal system just casts around wildly for some random person who was sort of involved in the chain of events leading to Santa's death, and then goes 'hey! New Santa over here!'?"

"Uh. Yes. How else would we pick the next Santa?"

"Literally any other way! I would have to try to come up with a worse system! Maybe if you selected the youngest baby in the world. Or the person who was responsible for the most deaths. Or whoever wrote the worst post on twitter today. Those would all be worse but this is almost as bad of a system."

"What's a Twitter?"

"It's a terrible website. It's not important. So OK, you're - what are you doing here, exactly?"

"Well, I was the previous Santa's personal adviser. I'm here to explain to you that you're Santa, tell you about how the magic works, answer any questions you have, take you to the North Pole, help you get settled in, and then have you pick another adviser if you want one. Or stick with me. Up to you, really."

"OK! Well. I have a lot of questions. Like, what does it... mean... that I am Santa."

"Have you heard of the Christmas spirit?"

"Vaguely? In movies?"

"Santa is the one who shapes what the Christmas spirit is like, based on his or her personal conception of the spirit of Christmas. So if you think it's more about spending time with your family, people open to the spirit of Christmas will find themselves enjoying time with their family more than they thought they would. If you think it's about being kind to the poor, people will give more to the poor. If you think it's about getting stuff, people will line up for hours to get the latest toy."

"Are you telling me that the Evangelicals are just flat-out right that Santa - mind controls people away from the religious aspects of the holiday towards whatever Santa thinks people should be doing. Like, without awareness that Santa is a real person who exists, but."

"Well, basically, except that you have to welcome the Christmas spirit into your heart, if you're closed off to it it doesn't have any effect on you."

"...OK."

That's, you know, still pretty weird but better than nonconsensual mind control.

"Also, you'll have to deliver presents, and art of Santa will start looking like you."

"That's... super weird honestly. - does existing Santa art change, that sounds kind of sad."

"Nope. The last Santa became Santa in 1863, and you'll notice that's about when Santa became a fat jolly man with a beard. The pre-1863 Santa drawings stayed the same."

"Huh. OK. Do I have, like, magic present-delivering powers?"

"You can stop time on December 25."

"Oh. That's... cool."

"I guess we could stop time for you more often but it's not good for humans to have their personal timelines get too far off the regular timeline, even if they are immortal."

"I'm immortal? I - guess that follows from the 1863 thing, but - wow."

"Well, you can still be killed, and in practice Santas don't often outlive elves-- their lives are more dangerous than ours, even though we age."

"So you're... an elf."

"Yep. That's why I can do magic, and why I have"-- he gestures-- "pointed ears."

He otherwise looks like a totally ordinary man in his early twenties.

"What exactly can you do with magic, just, whatever you want?"

"We can do lots of things but not everything-- can't resurrect the dead, can't make people fall in love with each other, can't kill-- and we can do even less if we're acting on our own and not in accordance with the Christmas spirit." 

"OK. So the Christmas spirit - whatever I, specifically, think that is - gives you, like, expanded superpowers. And also you can just, even without that, you can just take people to the moon and keep them from suffocating there."

"Yeah. The Moon is pretty great, isn't it?" He jumps six feet in the air.

"Suuure. So, the last Santa, he never, like, considered asking you to use your nearly boundless powers to, I dunno, found Starfleet? End war in the Middle East? Or are you all already doing stuff like that and my impression that he just kind of delivered presents and made it snow sometimes is wildly off?"

"Well, you know, there's the whole 'childlike faith' thing. If we end war in the Middle East or found Starfleet-- whatever that is-- then it will be obvious we exist and the children won't be able to have completely evidenceless belief in our existence."

He wonders if his smile looks as strained as it feels.

"Is there any... reason, besides the previous Santa's aesthetics, that children need to have evidenceless belief in our existence. Apart from the fact that we are incredibly powerful and if we reveal ourselves and play our cards wrong Russia might decide to nuke us or something. Like, on the other end of that, is there any reason people have to believe in us at all, are we like, feeding off of people's belief in Santa to fuel the Christmas spirit?"

"Absolutely none at all! Except the sheer beauty of children believing in things that as far as they know are total lies!"

He is pretty sure he did not, actually, manage to make that sound nonsarcastic.

Hopefully this human is as bad at sarcasm as the last one.

"OK. So, um, I'm not sure exactly what tone of Christmas movie I've stepped into, so if I go wildly off the rails just wave and go 'hey Karen, the script I have here doesn't say that, could you talk more about giving and love and faith, but I think getting parents to lie to their kids about stuff is kind of a messed up incarnation of the Christmas spirit even if it turns out that they have, inexplicably, actually been leading their children towards the truth all along until their children literally all inevitably lose faith and become jaded adults about the whole thing."

"...okay I like you a lot better than last Santa."

"....I never actually, um, believed in Santa. Ever. My parents think it's bad for parents to lie to their kids. I do like Christmas, though, so, like, if that's reassuring."

"Well, good for you, you shouldn't believe in things if there's no reason to believe they're true."

"OK. Cool. Good. I'm glad we agree on this. So - do I have, like, Santa duties, other than stopping time once a year and delivering presents."

"Well, all the elves are your slaves."

"OK. You're gonna have to help me out here, OK, because I'm very dumb, and I don't super know what that means."

"Well, you tell us to do things, and then we have to do them. --I thought humans had slaves. The last guy owned hundreds of slaves before he became Santa."

"Oh. Yeah, we stopped doing that in, uh, 1865, actually. I do, in fact, know what a slave is, I just - it's a very ambiguous word, in English, in some ways, it covers a lot of different situations, and I'm not super clear on what specific kind of situation this is. Are you, like, magically compelled to do whatever I say, is just not giving you any direct orders going to fix anything, or is this a house elves thing where that's insulting, or - ?"

"The whole world stopped doing that in 1865? How did you guys all agree on that?"

"Well, no, actually, um, I guess I don't really know what nationality Santa was? But I assume he was either European or American, or maybe Canadian, based on his depictions in movies, and I think pretty much everywhere in Europe had already outlawed slavery in 1863, so... America, my country, was actually kind of on the late side, there. And now there's been, like, globalization and the United Nations and I think slavery is illegal pretty much everywhere now. Although I guess the North Pole is not, like, a recognized member of the UN, or anything."

"I think technically we're part of Canada."

"OK. Well. That's good, you could do worse. Slavery is illegal in Canada, you've all been legally free for at least a century. Unless maybe laws about humans don't apply to elves, for some reason, but that'd be dumb. And I don't know if there's some kind of magic - anything, is there a magic element to the whole slavery thing?"

"Elves care a lot about the Christmas spirit, that's part of-- who we are as beings-- and we have to keep Santa happy so that they can do their job as Santa. And Santa knows better than anyone else what the Christmas spirit currently is."

"OK! So you are - magically devoted to the Christmas spirit and I probably have some kind of uncomfortable degree of weird nonconsensual mind control power over you, that's kind of creepy, but you're not, like, magically compelled to do everything I say, or anything?"

"I mean we can have opinions about what the Christmas spirit should be, separate from what it is. I had to lie to children but I still think lying to children is wrong. And yeah I can disobey you, the other Santa just... didn't like it."

"OK! That's - actually plausibly harder to ethically navigate than having a bunch of straightforward magical slaves, but I can probably outperform a plantation owner from the 1860s. Um, feel free to share any of your opinions at any time about anything I do in my capacity as Santa, or about anything else, I guess, and, uh, if I forget not to give you orders and my orders are dumb or you just don't wanna do them, then - don't. OK?"

"I can definitely give you opinions. I have so many opinions."

This is not really due diligence on Not Having Magical Slaves, but they're on the moon right now and he seems to be taking it OK. "Cool! I wanna hear them all in, like, two seconds. First I have to tell you that I have two kids at home, and - do I just take them with me to the North Pole, is that cool, is there, like, elf childcare or whatever?"

"Yeah, we can totally arrange for an elf to watch your kids-- it's a good thing you're married, that makes a lot of things simpler."

"I am not in fact married, they're my niece and nephew. But their parents are dead, so I'm raising them. What would it make simpler?"

"Santa has to be married. It's in the rules."

"What happens if I'm not?"

"Jack Frost becomes Santa and we have the holiday of Frostmas instead."

"What does that.... mean."

"Uh, well, Jack Frost doesn't want to lie about Santa being a thing so that's... nice?"

"Do we have any reason to want Jack Frost not to become Santa? ....is there some reason he hasn't already murdered Santa to become Santa himself?"

"...We are at all competent at our job."

"So there is in fact at least one person out there who is motivated to cause my death at all times, and he doesn't need to kill me directly, he just needs to be more causally related to my death than anyone else is. And the last Santa died repairing a roof."

"Uh. He hasn't killed any Santas yet? --And we don't really care that much about the difference between different human Santas but Jack Frost wants to make us work fifteen hours a day with no days off and then sell our toys." (He is clearly more offended by the concept of selling toys than by working fifteen hours a day.)

"Oh. OK. So we should avoid that, then. - Can he actually force you to do that, though, like, you can disobey him, and you seem like you're more powerful than Santa anyway, and - if worst comes to worst, what happens if an elf kills Santa?"

"I can't kill Santa. That would be-- killing Santa."

"I mean - you probably could? You couldn't use magic, but you could, like, stab him, if things got bad enough, right? There's no reason you actually can't?"

"There's no reason you can't, like, stab your kid, right?"

"I guess. But like - I don't hate my kid, and I haven't been enslaved for however many years, and also there's only one of me, and magical manslaughter charges aside, I think I'm pretty low on the stabbiness, compared to most people."

"Okay but-- humans don't stab their kids, they don't, even when their kids are being incredibly obnoxious, it's just-- not the sort of thing humans do, not unless they're insane. That's what it's like for us about stabbing Santa."

"I dunno, plenty of people stab them before they're out. And we used to leave them on mountainsides to die if we thought they were cursed. But yes, I see your point."

"Humans stab babies?!"

"Well - I'm not an expert on state-of-the-art methods of killing babies, but, uh, sometimes people get pregnant and don't want to be and they decide this calls for drastic action." How do you explain abortion to elves from the north pole who just now learned that slavery wasn't a thing in the rest of the world anymore.

"...That's really bad. You shouldn't kill babies."

"Yeah, yes, I agree it's really bad. I'm not sure whether there's a way to apply the Christmas spirit to it in any way, but... yeah."

"--I guess the world has lots of problems and I just didn't know about that one but. Wow. There are a lot of problems."

"It's a pretty bad problem! But yeah. We have a lot."

"Mostly we elves know about problems from the letters kids send us. You know, 'what I want for Christmas is for mommy to stop crying' or 'what I want for Christmas is a home to stay in' or 'what I want for Christmas is for my daddy to stop hitting my mommy.'" 

"Yeah. All problems. There are also, uh, worse problems than that, but I think some of them mostly happen to kids who don't have access to the postal services. Or paper."

"We get the letters if they want to write letters to Santa but can't, we-- don't get ones from the kids who don't know Santa exists at all."

"Yeah. Which is probably a pretty common state of affairs in - well, everywhere, but probably even more common in rural India or wherever."

"...Do we need to give presents to the kids in rural India."

"I mean I think they would appreciate it, what with the dire poverty and all? How do you usually decide who gets presents?"

"Well, if the kids have done more nice things than naughty things over the course of the year, they get a present, scaled according to what we can make the parents believe they bought for the kid."

"But only if their parents are celebrating Christmas? Or specifically doing the Santa aspects of Christmas? - do you just have psychic knowledge of all of the actions of specifically and only all of the children whose parents celebrate Christmas, or do you know about everyone but you ignore some of them, or what?"

"We only know if children were naughty or nice if their parents are doing Santa."

"OK. Good to know. ...it only applies to children, you can't just be like 'hey, everyone's getting a present this year' and find out what everyone did?"

"It's the spirit of Christmas to bring joy to children, that's one of the things we can't change."

"OK, cool, children only. Are we required to only give presents to nice children? - also is there, like, an objective arbiter of which actions are nice, are you asking God or manually counting them up via twenty-four hour magic snowball surveillance or getting a list handed to you from - I can't think of a fitting source off the top of my head, I should probably stop trying to come up with guesses. But the naughty and nice stuff, is that decided by you or by me or by something else?"

"Santa thought we shouldn't bring joy to naughty children."

"So he added that requirement himself. So you are doing magic surveillance?"

"Yep. There's a team of elves that watches all the children whose parents might do Santa to record whether their actions were naughty or nice."

She is the dubiously absolute commander of the most advanced surveillance and espionage organization in the world. And she can stop time. 

"OK. I don't wanna say anything super definite here, because I don't know exactly how many elves I have or what constraints I'm working under and I'm kind of hesitant to... assign anybody anything, given that I am not really sure they should actually be listening to me at all. But I'm inclined to say we should keep that program and use it to give everyone the presents they need most, regardless of whether they were naughty or nice. Are we limited to one present per child?"

"Nope. Rich kids sometimes get dozens of presents."

"So we can get around the children-only rule and at least make sure that everyone who has a child in their household can theoretically have access to the stuff they need, through their kids. Are we strictly limited to toys?"

"We have to bring joy to children but-- there are lots of children who are brought joy best by things other than toys, and sometimes we can arrange that for them but often we can't."

"Examples? Like, I assume you can't make daddy stop hitting mommy, but if the thing they need is medicine? Books? Crutches? Clothes? Nonperishable food? A house?"

"Oh, sometimes we can make daddy stop hitting mommy."

"What, really?"

"If the dad has the Christmas spirit, we can arrange for him to have a realization that he should stop drinking, or that he should go to therapy, or something like that."

"Huh. That's - probably ethically complicated in some way but also kind of great. I guess I will plausibly want to see if I can invest in getting more people to have the Christmas spirit. Especially people who are making terrible decisions."

"People have to be allowed to refuse the Christmas spirit."

"Well, yeah, and that's really important. But if Christmas is, like, better, then more people'll end up having feelings about it, right?"

"Better like-- we bring joy to more children?"

"Better like, we bring more joy to more children, and also the thing that Christmas pushes people towards is - less of a blind faith in nonsense thing and more of a thing that more people hear and go 'hmm, that just seems really straightforwardly good, actually'. But there can be more joy for more children, as a part of that, I think bringing joy to children is probably a good policy."

"The Christmas spirit is always supposed to be about bringing joy to children."

"Right, OK, yeah, but that's about more than presents, right? You just said, sometimes the thing that brings a kid more joy than anything else is for their dad to stop abusing their mom, or to stop abusing them. Sometimes it's about healthy, loving families, or safe and prosperous communities, or about not being homeless anymore, or about not being stuck in a war zone, or not being sick all the time. Sometimes it's about chasing out fear or anger or despair so there's space in their hearts for joy. And to do that, it has to be a little bit about everyone, right, even if you always put the kids first? What's good for kids is good for people, and what's good for people is good for kids. Are we about that, or are we about dispensing presents to kids who already have almost everything they want?"

"I am totally about that but we are going to have to figure out how to do it by means of doing things around December 25th."

"I am not immediately sure how, but I feel like we can meet this challenge. Or at least improve on what we were left with.

"I do need to figure out what we're working with and how exactly your magic is constrained. And also ideally figure out how to credibly inform everybody that I would prefer not to have a bunch of elf slaves. But I'm all for achieving all of my goals via sappy Christmas movie plots, I really am."

"Is there a reason you can't just say 'I would prefer not to have a bunch of elf slaves'?"

"'Cause - I dunno, I feel like if I were a slave and someone was like 'hey, you're free, no really, but also I'm going to keep attempting to assign you things and organize Christmas', I would not super believe them? And even if I did believe them, I would be kind of unclear on what that meant. Like, I could try removing whatever mechanism the previous Santa used to control you, and then assume that without that in place you could do what you wanted, but I'm honestly super unclear on how he managed it, given that you're all reality warpers and as far as I can tell my powers are pretty much, uh, season-specific warm fuzzies."

"Well, if you're sad, then you can't be a good Santa, and then Christmas is worse."

"So, what, the previous Santa just showed up and informed all of you that you were his slaves, and you had no strong feelings about this and just sort of went 'sure, seems legit' for a hundred and fifty years despite the lack of any kind of enforcement mechanism, because that would make Santa happy?"

"...Are you going to want us to not make you food and take care of your kids and clean your house?"

" - I mean, I don't know, will it make you sad? Or mildly annoyed?"

"No, because it will make you happy, and then Christmas will work better."

" - what if I was totally neutral on making my own food, what would you want then?"

"Probably you should still let us make your food because cooking takes time."

"OK, y'know, valid reason.

" - I think the part of this that makes me uncomfortable is having a bunch of people who don't know me at all but are strongly motivated to make me happy because I was sort of arguably responsible for killing their previous master, who they also wanted to make happy but who they seem to have been kind of upset with anyway, and also they're just psychologically inhuman enough that I do not have a clear picture of what doing right by them looks like."

"I was more upset with him than most of us were?" Lev tries. "We didn't mind it that much really."

"Well - honestly I still have no idea what that means for what I should do on this front? But - maybe it'll be easier to figure out what I should be doing once I meet more elves, or something."

"We can go to the North Pole now if you want."

"Yeah. I guess. I should... probably pick up my kids and explain stuff to them, but honestly they might be the sort of people who are best served by being whisked away to the North Pole and then being offered an explanation."

"I love showing kids the North Pole!"

This is kind of all utterly ridiculous, but at least it's the sort of adventure where people approve of her bringing her kids along.

"Aww, great. Then I guess we can head home and pick them up."

And they're back at Karen's house!

She goes to find them. They're playing in the backyard, not really together.

"Hey Connor? Zana? There's someone here, and I'm, like, eighty percent sure that he's gonna take us to the North Pole in a second."

"What?"

"What??"

Probably a maximally responsible person would wait to get consent before going forward, but that strikes her as pointlessly annoying, and she feels like she was excellently served by being teleported to the moon and that the case for teleporting Zana and Connor to the North Pole is honestly even stronger.

"Go ahead," she tells the elf.

The room they wind up in isn't that different from their room at home, just a little bit nicer.  

There's a comfy couch and a bunch of comfy chairs, and four bookshelves full of science fiction, and a Bible on a side table, and a television with a game system hooked up, and Star Trek and X Files posters on the wall.

"What is this."

"Honestly I haven't been here before? This person just showed up and explained to me that I was somehow involved in the death of Santa, who is a real person, and that this meant that I had to become the new Santa, and normally I would not be quite gullible enough to believe this, but then he teleported me to the moon, and that made it a lot easier to believe. So I figured that instead of trying to convince you that I wasn't crazy, we could maybe skip some steps and just teleport you to the North Pole. Except apparently the North Pole doesn't look that different."

"Should I have teleported you to a different place? I thought Santa's house was a reasonable place."

"No, no, it makes sense, you did good. Connor's just a little bit on the skeptical side of things."

He frowns at her and looks out the window.

"We could show you... the reindeer? Children like reindeer, right?"

"...I guess if you have reindeer you could show them to us."

"This way!"

Outside, it's snowing enthusiastically, even though it's the middle of summer. The entire town gives off the air that, if it does not currently happen to be in the middle of a snowglobe, this is due to a regrettable oversight that should be corrected posthaste. Lev seems to be one of the oldest elves; most of the people carrying shopping bags, talking on cell phones, and pushing baby strollers seem to be Connor's age, if not Suzanna's. 

The streetlights are hanging off candy canes. 

"...oh wow."

"This is... admittedly pretty weird."

"Snow!!"

Zana wants to play in the snow. She's not remotely dressed for it, but this isn't going to stop her.

"...We should get you some warm clothes first. Uh. My guess is that there's probably some in the house?"

Karen scoops her up. This requires some running. "You'll get hypothermia or something, silly. Let's find you a coat."

"What's hyperthermia?"

"Hypo. Hypothermia. It's when the outside of your body gets so cold that it makes the inside cold, and it stops working, and you die. It'd be very inconvenient for building snowmen. Which is why it's important to wear warm clothes when it's cold. That and frostbite."

"What's frostbite?"

"Frostbite is when pieces of you freeze and you can't move them and they die. Also inconvenient for snowman-building, trust me."

She carries her back inside and looks around for a closet that might be full of coats and hats and mittens.

There's a closet right next to the front door, with a coat Zana's size that closely resembles a dinosaur.

"It's a DINOSAUR," exclaims Zana, before hurrying to put it on. She can do everything except the zipper by herself.

Karen can help her with the zipper. And then find a coat for herself and for Connor.

This place is pretty weird, but at least it seems, like, benevolent. 

Zana heads back outside.

"Were you gonna show us some REINDEER?"

"Yeah! The reindeer are close to Santa's house because he takes care of them. It's right down Holly Jolly Lane."

"I wanna see!!"

Then they will all go down Holly Jolly Lane together. 

Human children, Lev concludes, are even better than expected.

Zana is SO EXCITED to see REAL LIVE REINDEER. She was not aware that Santa was real but APPARENTLY HE IS and this is VERY COOL.

There are reindeer! Would she like to give them a carrot?

"Yeah!!" 

She is so serious about feeding carrots to reindeer. 

(Awww, they're adorable.)

Then she can continue to feed carrots to reindeer although she should probably feed them to different reindeer so they don't mess up their diets. 

"...are we going to have to figure out about school?" Lev asks. "I don't know what human children learn."

"Um, ideally? She's not in school yet, she's mostly working on learning to read, but Connor is. I guess he's probably studying arithmetic and reading and writing and history and science and art, although a little foreign language instruction wouldn't be amiss - I guess he probably also has friends, is there, like, can visits to people be arranged - "

"Well, you want to stop keeping it secret anyway, so it doesn't really matter if he tells people-- although maybe it would be better if he didn't so they don't think he's crazy-- there's a school for the elf kids but I don't think human children usually learn toymaking or magical theory."

"No, but I'm not sure it would harm them? Unless those are the only things they study."

"I mean it replaces things humans study. Like Latin? I'm pretty sure humans study Latin."

" - I did in fact study Latin for a few years, but I don't remember much of it and I really think toymaking and magical theory are probably more useful."

"Last guy was big into Latin. He said it teaches humans how to think precisely."

"I think any language would be about as good for that. And it'd be better to learn something that people actually speak. - I guess if I wanna be a really ideal Santa I should maybe learn a lot more languages myself."

"I can take care of that if you want?"

"That would be good. At least while we're just getting started."

He waves a hand!

Probably fluency in all languages was supposed to feel like something but it does not.

" - oh, was that like a magic thing? You can do that with magic? - I'm really unclear on what all you can do with magic."

"How about if I can't do something I'll tell you?"

"Okay."

Now he is going to very seriously watch Zana feed carrots to reindeer.

Reindeer are GREAT. She is very seriously making sure that all of them get a carrot.

"Is there anything else we need to do to get you guys settled in?"

"Um. I - guess plausibly I should quit my job, if I have to be Santa now. Assuming we don't need human currency for anything."

"...you could keep working your job if it's psychologically important to you? Although in only thirty years or so we'll have to come up with a new identity for you."

"It's, um - I don't really know what's psychologically important to me."

"I guess you have a lot of time to figure it out."