Meave and the Magic of Christmas Cloud Tour

Once upon a time, a long time ago there was a big girl named Meave who almost could not wait for Christmas. Right after thanksgiving she begged her parents to start putting up Christmas decorations and to go to the Christmas tree farm to find a tree to cut down. 

Meave’s excitement for Christmas wasn’t just about gifts. Don’t get me wrong because she did love gifts, but what she loved most of all was the magic and the mystery of Christmas. She loved to think about how Santa knew what gift to bring to her and how he was able to visit so many houses all in one night without being seen. Also, how was he able to eat so many cookies and drink so much milk without being sick? Was he always able to do that or did his magic work only on Christmas? 

And she loved the time with family and especially sharing gifts with her parents. Every year Meave would hand make a Christmas present for her parents herself, and they always said it was their very favorite thing and depending on what it was they would hang it up or put it on their dresser or their desk where they could always see it. That made Meave feel very proud. 

Every family has different traditions around holidays. In Meave’s family, on Christmas, kids had to wait to open the presents from their family but when they woke up in the morning they were allowed to go to the tree and open the present that Santa had left them. Meave’s dad said that this rule came about because it was the only way to prevent Meave from waking up her parents before dawn on Christmas morning. Meave thought it was a special tradition becuase it could be a moment just for her and Santa. Even though she couldn’t see him, she knew that he could feel her opening the present. 

Well, on this particular day it was still very early when Meave woke up and headed down to the living room. She saw that Santa had eaten two of the cookies she left out, and drank half the glass of milk. She helped herself to the third cookie and sat down to admire her present. The box was large but not tall, rectangle shaped, and tied with a beautiful and luminous rainbow bow. Looking at the box Meave tried to remember what she had asked Santa for and guess what it might be, but all she could think of were the many thoughts and questions she had had about magic that year. That was okay though, it would be a surprise and Meave knew that whatever Santa had brought it would be just right because it had been gifted with love and through the power of Christmas magic. 

Meave pulled the mysterious box out from under the tree and sat down in front of it. As she pulled on the bow she thought she could see some light coming out from under the lid of the box. It must be some kind of electronic toy with lights, Meave thought. 

But as she pulled the lid off of the box, she saw something she could never have imagined. Because out of the box shone the brightest, most vibrant rainbow she had ever seen. She gingerly put her hand out to touch it, and as her hand entered the light she felt a floating sensation in her hand and watched as the rainbow seemed to lift he hand. When she pulled her hand back out of the rainbow the lifting sensation was gone. She tried it again with her other hand and it was the same. The rainbow seemed to shine from the box right through the living room ceiling and onward to the sky. 

This gave Meave an idea. What if the rainbow was like an elevator? Putting on her robe first for warmth, Meave stood beside the box and placed her hand into the rainbow. As it began to rise she also placed one foot into the rainbow and was amazed to feel her other foot lift off of the ground. Meave shrugged and put her other hand and foot into the rainbow, and then her whole body and felt herself slowly lifted. Through the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet tints of the rainbow Meave watched her christmas tree get smaller and smaller, and then her house, and then her town as she rode the rainbow straight up into the clouds. 

As Meave arrived at the first cloud, she was astonished to find herself greeted by an elf. He looked just like a Santa Clause elf except instead of red or green his elf hat, elf clothes and even his elf shoes were rainbow colored. 

“Greetings,” he said. “My name is Nimbus Twinkletoes, and I will be guiding your tour.”

“My tour?” asked Meave, bewildered.

The elf raised a magical eyebrow and looked at Meave quizzically. “You are Meave aren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Meave.

“Wonderful,” said the Elf. “I was terribly afraid there had been a mixup! We have you booked in for the Magic of Christmas Cloud Tour at precisely Right Now O’Clock.”

“Magic of Christmas Cloud Tour?” Meave asked, still a bit bewildered.

“Terribly sorry,” said the Elf. “The North Pole tour has been fully booked out for months. I assure you that the cloud workshop is just as critical to Christmas operations as the flagship North Pole workshop. Confidentially, between just you and me, our operation here is quite a bit more advanced and efficient. I think you’ll find Christmas would just not be possible without us.”

“Santa has a workshop here?” Meave asked, still bewildered.

“Yes of course!” said Nimbus. “I can see how you might be confused. Given the highly magical and mysterious nature of our work it does take quite a while for the latest innovations in Christmas magic craft to be reflected in your Christmas-related stories and movies. But if you’ll consider for a moment I think you’ll see that it’s an absolute logistical necessity. You see, the Santa’s workshop you’ll be thinking of is from a much simpler time. It’s a lower volume shop and almost entirely focused on wooden toys and stuffies. It’s also terribly inefficient from a logistics standpoint. All raw materials need to be brought in by Sleigh, and their entire delivery apparatus is just Santa flying back and forth to pick up bags of presents. There are over two billion kids on earth! Santa is magical but that’s no reason to be inefficient. Here in the cloud factories we are able to provide on time production, and resupply Santa’s sleigh directly with zero downtime via our rainbow elevator technology.”

“The rainbow elevator,” said Meave, “that’s how I got here!”

“Now you’re catching on,” said Nimbus, “Clever girl!” 

Nimbus explained that the cloud they were currently on was called the resupply cloud. The rainbow elevator Meave had used worked for magical tours like this one, and it’s also what the Cloud Workshop System would use to gather raw materials needed for the creation of various gifts. This cloud was a hub that other clouds would visit when they needed raw materials. 

Some raw materials were in such high demand that whenever possible it made sense to produce them directly in the factory. This is why, for example, when SquishMellows become so popular, Santa’s cloud workshop had moved away from sourcing cotton on the ground and instead developed a process for making it directly from especially white and fluffy clouds. 

Flip sequins for T-shirts and flip-sequin stuffies similarly were sourced from the sparkly part raindrops, which are already naturally produced in clouds. A dedicated cloud factory produced glitter using a similar process, and another produced Snow Globes using actual snow from magical clouds.

Once gifts were made in the factories, they were sorted based on the region where the receiving child lived and dispatched via wind currents. Then, as Santa’s supply ran low on his sleigh they would be beamed down directly into his bags via rainbow elevator, eliminating altogether the need for Santa to return to the North Pole except for wooden toys which, for reasons of tradition and out of respect for the preference of the North Pole workshop elf community, were still produced and delivered via the traditional methods. 

“I don’t design the toys,” Nimbus commented wryly. “What I do is deliver them on time, under budget, and exactly where they are needed.”

Over the course of their tour, Nimbus Twinkletoes gave Meave a sampling of some of the Cloud Workshop products and materials to try - Squishmallow stuffing, a cloud-sourced marshmallow, a handfull of flip sequins, and a cloud-produced snow globe that ironically depicted only Santa’s original workshop on the North Pole. When the tour was done, Meave returned back to her family’s living room via the same rainbow that had brought her up, and placed these special items into the box from Santa. 

When Meave’s parents awoke and saw the snow globe and random assortment of odds and ends they were a little puzzled and asked Meave if those were what she had asked from Santa. Meave beamed and told her parents that they were the most interesting gift Santa had ever brought and the perfect answer to all she had been asking for months.