"Yeah. You get to be tall, helps to reach high places."

(If Sasha looks around he might notice that the average age of elves appears to be about ten, and the counter is being manned by an elementary schooler.)

"That does seem convenient," Sasha says instead of commenting. 

"Um, I have a lot of questions about humans, but I'm not sure if it's right to ask them? It's just that we don't know that much about humans once they stop believing in Santa Claus, or about humans who don't celebrate Christmas at all--"

"You can ask questions!" 

"...what do humans get out of having pet fish?"

"...it might help to think of it less like a pet and more like a higher-effort potted plant?" 

"I'm also not sure what they get out of potted plants."

"You have a pretty growing thing in your house, and it's like having a tiny lil piece of nature inside, access to nature matters to some people and if you live in a city you probably don't have much of it." 

"...So it's like Christmas trees. Or mistletoe."

"I have never had a Christmas tree but for humans at least it appears to fill a completely different function, and if you're human mistletoe exists so you have an excuse to kiss someone under it, but for elves very plausibly." 

"When it's cold and frozen out and there's nothing green humans need to put some of the green inside of their houses so they can remember that the rest of the green will come back someday."

"...yeah. Like that." 

"...I mean, humans probably like the kissing too, but Jack O'Lantern would know more about that."

"Eh, kissing is fun but mistletoe kissing I could take or leave, you can be cute about it but sometimes someone thinks it's a good idea to have it at a workplace Christmas party and your asshole coworker just stands there under the mistletoe the whole party and just leers at you and you have to do ridiculous logistical planning to not get caught under it with him." 

"...that does not sound great!"

"It really isn't!" 

"Why do humans do... so much... of that."

"The coercive kissing thing? People like sex and lots of people like having power over other people and sometimes those things combine in perfectly fine ways but sometimes they combine in ways that are terrible." 

"The... trying to get people to have sex when they don't want to."

"...same reason, pretty much. It's mostly a difference of degree and not kind." 

"...we get a lot of letters from kids. Including the ones they can't write and just think, or say privately. If they mean to direct it to Santa, we get it."

"...jesus fucking christ." 

"And we can't. Do anything about it. Most of the time."

"Like, innately, or because of a policy the previous santa set to conceal his existence, or —" 

"Well, it's hard to give presents that help, and-- we can influence people if they're open to the Christmas spirit, or I guess the Yule spirit now, but most people who do that aren't-- and our own Santa was, uh--"