Read Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes for Free Online Page B

time to do so.
    So far had the buzz spread that Gregor and his brothers, Josef and Engelbert, dropped by from the stables, ostensibly to pitch in where they were needed. But Gregor’s fierce eyes, darting everywhere at once, told a different tale. It surprised no one when his brothers spread word of a meeting at the Chapel after lights out.
    The day having fled, Fritz and Herbert trudged through moonlit snow, past the stables and up into the woods behind the workshop. In twos and threes traipsed Santa’s helpers, threading past boulders and clusters of pine trees. They carried lanterns, held high or swinging from lax hands. The long line of elves snaked its way to the Chapel, a bowed configuration of trees where God had joined Santa and Anya and Rachel in holy matrimony eight years before.
    As the final stragglers found their places, Gregor strode to the fore. The moonlight was most intense where the Almighty had stood, and into it stepped Gregor. He planted his feet firm, crossed his arms in a tight harrumph, and glared over the sea of elves, saying nothing. He nodded. Again. A third nod. Laughter rippled through the crowd. But Gregor did not crack a smile and the laughter died down as quickly as it had begun.
    Fritz leaned to Herbert. “This must be about Santa, don’t you think?”
    Herbert shrugged and nodded, shook his head no, and shrugged again.
    Gregor pointed sharply into the crowd. Stabs, as if to say, Caught you! Caught you! He would point, then withdraw his hand and tuck it decisively back into the crook of his opposite elbow.
    “I see you,” he said at last. “I see you all. You think Santa has changed? We have changed. We all saw Santa in his office, looking older. Some weight has been dropped on the big baby’s toes. I have no idea what. Tomorrow, it may vanish. He’ll be his same damned cheery old self. But you and I have changed in the years since Wendy and Rachel arrived, since Knecht Rupert played the organ for the wedding while Johann and Gustav worked the bellows. Our hands stayed at our sides, or busied themselves with making toys, or buried themselves in our pockets, or gesticulated to match our words, or little-boy’d behind our backs, or tossed our caps into the heavens at Santa’s return on Christmas morning.
    “But more and more our hands have begun acting shamefully. It has become habitual. I notice it. I marvel that no one else notices it.”
    Fritz wondered what Gregor was talking about. He thought himself fairly observant, yet he had seen nothing special. He stared at his hands and let them drop.
    Gregor extended his index fingers as though making a point. His elbows were bent at perfect right angles. “Observe these fingers. They have never, not once, known sin.” He stood erect and fierce. “Fingers find nostrils, do they not? They root about in them. They ferret out certain...prizes. Certain soft foul discolorations that gloop up into shameless droppings at a fingertip’s end. Sometimes these prizes—”
    (again he put a nasty spin on the word)
    “—are smeared on sleeves or handkerchiefs or workbench surfaces, to dry and crust and be brushed away. But in the extreme, certain as yet unnamed miscreants eat what they find. I have seen it. In the workshop, I have seen it. In the commons, I have seen it. Tonight, at this very gathering, here in this hallowed place, I have seen it. Over and over and over. The practice squanders our energy. It vitiates us. The act is vile, disgusting, bestial, self-abusive, and downright unelflike.”
    Fritz looked at Herbert, who no longer smiled but stared at him from beneath a cloud of shame. In truth, Fritz felt shame of his own, though he was not sure why. Did Gregor have a point?
    “The nose,” continued Gregor, tapping his bulbous proboscis, “is a wondrous organ. Sensitive to mere hints of aroma, capacious and wide of nostril to welcome in fresh air, capable of issuing sharp sniffs of disapproval—and there is so much in this world to