Counting Santa's Gifts

Editors note: From time to time, The North Pole Times asks some of the more notable citizens of the North Pole to write a little bit about themselves as a public service to our readers. Today, Adamup Elf writes about the things he counts--and the things he doesn't!

I've always loved to count. It doesn't matter what, if I see a bunch of things together, I'll just start counting them. In my 136,449 days, I've counted 5,742,852 bananas, 8,655,912 Christmas Trees, 927 girls named Zoë, and two chimpanzees who knew how to wash cats. And that's just a few (five) of the many (29,284) things that I've officially counted in my life.

But the one thing I like to count the most, of course, is Christmas Presents. I think it's a great honor to keep track of all of the gifts that will be going out around the world with Santa on that special night--Christmas Eve--that's just a few (eight) days away!

But here's something I don't think any of you (zero) know: I haven't always counted Christmas Presents! In fact, there was a time (starting 136,586 days ago) when I refused to count Christmas Presents. It was when I was just a young Elf. My brother Chipper and I would be just as excited about Christmas morning as anyone else. I noticed Chipper would always count the presents he got, and compared it with the number of presents I got! If he got less than I did, he would cry and yell and carry on! For him, it didn't matter whether or not he liked all the presents Santa brought him--even if he got everything on his wish list--If I got more toys then him, he would cry.

Luckily, he soon grew out of that sort of thing, but it made me realize how silly it was to only look at what I din't get. Santa gives me enough--often more than I ask for, and it's given with love!

Well, I got to get back to counting. You may have heard that all the presents we though were missing have turned up! Someone's got to go count all the presents to make sure they're all there. Sounds like fun to me!