The Christmasaurus

by Tom Fletcher

  “This egg needs warming under someone’s bum,

  But an elf’s backside is a tiny one.

  If every elf put its bottom on the egg,

  The egg would freeze their bums instead.

  “So an elf can’t do it—that’s a silly idea!

  An elf can’t do it—it would take a whole year!

  If an elf can’t do it, there must be someone else,

  Someone much bigger than a North Pole elf!”

  And the elves finished their song and dance on their knees, pointing their fingers at Santa, looking up at him with hopeful eyes.

  “Me?” Santa said. “I can’t sit on that egg! It’s almost Christmastime—there’s so much planning to be done…and…packing and…wrapping….” Santa hesitated, but deep down he knew what needed to be done—and he knew that he was the only person to do it. His elves would take care of all the Christmas preparations. All he needed to do was park his giant, jolly, warm bottom on top of that frozen egg!

  So that’s exactly what he did!

  Santa sat on the egg day and night. It was very uncomfortable, as I’m sure you can imagine, but the elves made him breakfast, brunch, snack, lunch, tea, dinner, and supper every day, and delivered it to him on a tray (with a song). They even wheeled his television into the makeshift egg-warming room, the linen closet, so that Santa could watch his favorite Christmas films (which were mostly about him!) while the egg defrosted beneath his enormous backside.

  Occasionally the egg would wobble a little, and the longer Santa perched on top of it, the more and more it wobbled! Santa knew this was a good sign that his warm bottom was doing the trick.

  But time was not on the egg’s side. Each day that passed brought Christmas a day closer.

  “Come on, egg-wobbler, whatever you are. If you don’t get a move on and hatch by Christmas Eve, then I’ll have no choice but to fly off and leave you! I’d hate to give up on you, but the children need me. It’s my duty, y’see,” Santa whispered worriedly as the clock struck midnight, signaling the end of another no-show day from whatever was inside the egg.

  At that moment, Santa had an idea. Maybe the egg would hatch faster if the linen closet was even warmer.

  “Snozzletrump, turn up the central heating to full blast at once!” Santa ordered.

  After a few hours, the ranch felt like a sauna. Sprout even cut the legs off his pants and turned them into shorts. It wasn’t long before all the elves thought that was a pretty nifty idea and followed suit, and for the first time in history, the North Pole gift shop in the elf city started selling sweater vests instead of sweaters, and snapback caps instead of thick, woolly elf hats. It was the hottest Santa’s ranch had ever been! Santa stripped right down to his stripy red and white undervest and his best Christmas underpants (the red ones with white snowflakes on them that played “Jingle Bells” when you pulled them up). He was so hot and sticky, but he didn’t mind. He would do whatever it took to get that thing inside the egg out safely.

  All this time, Santa and the elves had been trying to guess what was wobbling around inside the egg. Some elves guessed it was a bunch of big bunnies; others thought it was a polar bear. There were lots of stupid, nonsensical elf guesses, and none of them got it right.

  But, of course, they hadn’t read the start of this story as you have. I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that this egg was the exact same special egg I told you about at the beginning—so, unlike Santa and the elves, you know exactly what was inside it….

  * * *

  —

  Soon there was only one chocolate left in Santa’s Advent calendar—and that meant it was Christmas Eve.

  “Come on, Eggy, there’s not much time!” sighed Santa, patting the smooth shell under his bottom.

  All the North Pole elves and their families had crowded into the egg-warming room to show their support. Some had brought candles. Others had brought little electric heaters from their homes. They all sat together around the egg and sang Christmas carols all day long, trying to encourage the egg-wobbler to wobble its way out!

  After a little while, Snozzletrump inspected the egg, running his hands over every inch of its shell. When he had finished, he turned to face the waiting crowd with a sorrowful expression on his sweaty face.

  “The egg that sits behind my back has not one single hatching crack.”

  Santa let out a long sigh. He knew the time had come for him to step down from the egg and get ready for…

  A great noise echoed around the room. All the elves jumped to their feet excitedly.

  “Shush, everyone!” hissed Santa. From on top of the egg he put his hand down and felt the smooth shell. He ran his hand along the shiny surface, which was no longer cold and frozen but actually quite warm. Suddenly, he stopped moving his hand. He’d felt something. He moved his fingers back an inch or two, and there it was: a very thin but very definite crack in the eggshell!

  “It’s hatching time!” Santa bellowed.

  A hushed excitement spread like magic throughout the room as Santa carefully climbed down from the egg and stood with all his elves, watching.

  Then, out of nowhere, a very deep rumble could be heard. It was a most peculiar sound, almost like the rumble of a distant train, or like a very loud, very hungry tummy. The rumble was coming from inside the egg! Santa looked at the eight elves who had found the egg, who were all looking excitedly nervous—or maybe they were nervously excited. It was hard to tell.

  The rumble grew louder. The egg started to wobble. Suddenly, that tiny crack broke open a little more. Now there was a big, deep, dark crack, which they could almost see into.

  All the elves held hands very tightly. Snozzletrump let out a nervous snozzletrump.

  Then, just as suddenly as it had all started, everything seemed to stop.

  The rumble stopped.

  The wobbling stopped.

  No more cracks appeared.

  Just silence.

  Everyone in the room was still except for Santa. He took one brave step forward and peered into the shell. He couldn’t see much. It was all very dark—but it looked like there was something shiny inside. As Santa leaned in for a closer look, that shiny something BLINKED!

  “It’s an eye!” gasped Santa.

  And the eye was looking out at everyone in the room!

  Santa almost jumped out of his skin, which made all the elves almost jump out of their skins! Once they’d got back into their skins, all of them laughed nervously at themselves for being such scaredy-cats.

  That’s when it happened.

  Santa and the elves dived for cover as the egg exploded into a billion sparkly pieces, showering the room in shimmering shell that fell like glitter dust over their heads.

  Slowly Santa got to his feet and sneezed off some of the shell dust from his mustache and beard. He brushed glitter from his underpants and wiped his full-moon spectacles, and when he put them back on his nose, he couldn’t quite believe what his eyes saw. In the middle of the room, where the egg had stood moments ago, was something impossible. But this was the North Pole, where anything is possible.

  “What is it?” cried the elves.

  Then they heard a

  “Well, bless my kringles,” Santa said with a tear in his eye. “It’s a baby DINOSAUR!”

  A great chitter-natter arose among the elves as they fired a relentless round of rhyming questions at Santa.

  “What type of dinosaur?”

  “What’s its name?”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Or is it tame?”

  “If it’s a girl, can we call her Ginny?”

  “I think it’s a boy! Look, he’s got a thingy!”

  “THAT’S ENOUGH!” Santa commanded, gesturing for the giddy elves to settle down. He wanted to get a better look at the new, freshly hatched membe
r of their North Pole family (who was indeed a boy dinosaur—thank you, Snozzletrump). Santa slowly walked over to this impossible creature sitting on the floor. The baby dinosaur was unlike any dinosaur Santa had ever seen in a book or museum.

  At first glance, the dinosaur had deep blue scaly skin that was so reflective and shiny he could almost have been a magnificent, translucent ice sculpture. But as Santa stepped closer, he saw that the dinosaur’s skin was a combination of thousands of rich colors that made a strange pattern down his spine. Perhaps it was because the dinosaur had been frozen in the ice for so long, or maybe it was pure coincidence, but the pattern on his back looked as if a scattering of large, perfectly symmetrical snowflakes had fallen on his head and all the way down to the tip of his long tail, which was curled up around him like that of a giant, scaly cat.

  The baby dinosaur blinked, and Santa saw that he was nervous. Santa held out one of his big, warm hands and looked deep into the dinosaur’s eyes, and the dinosaur relaxed instantly. That was one of Santa’s special tricks: if you looked into Santa’s kind, jolly eyes, all your troubles and worries would melt away like icicles in the sunshine.

  Santa put his hand on the dinosaur’s scaly head and said happily, “You arrived just in time for me to say this to you—Merry Christmas!” And as Santa patted the dinosaur’s head, the dinosaur’s tongue flopped merrily out of his smiling mouth. After millions of years inside a frozen egg, he couldn’t have defrosted in a more magical place.

  “Hmmmm, now what sort of dinosaur are you?” Santa said to himself while combing bits of eggshell from his beard. “Snozzletrump! Skip to the library, please, and fetch the encyclopedia.”

  “Certainly, Your Merriness, I’ll fetch it— Argh…” Snozzletrump moaned as Santa booted him out of the room before he could finish his rhyme. Moments later, the elf came skipping back in, carrying an enormously thick book on his head.

  “Right!” Santa said, pushing up his brass-framed spectacles. Lifting the book from the elf, he began flicking through the pages. “Let’s see…apple pie…big bogies…bigger bogies…cotton candy…Here we are! Dinosaurs!” Santa threw the open book onto the ground for all the elves to see.

  On the pages were hundreds of illustrations of every kind of dinosaur you could possibly think of. Scaly ones with horns, horny ones with scales, red ones with claws, blue ones with paws, feathery ones with flappers, leathery ones with snappers, meat-eaty ones, veg-gobbly ones…BUT not a single drawing or description of the hundreds and hundreds in the book looked anything like the dinosaur sitting in front of them.

  The elves cried out, “He’s not in here! Honest, look! He’s not any dinosaur in this book!”

  Just then a great-grandfather clock chimed, and Spudcheeks the elf came hurrying into the room singing with some urgency:

  “The sleigh is loaded and ready to go;

  You must leave now with a ho, ho, ho.

  The reindeer are fed and fit to fly!

  I’ve polished your goggles to protect your eyes.

  The children are sleeping and waiting for toys—

  We’ll look after this dinosaur, won’t we, boys?”

  “AND GIRLS!” shouted Starlump and Sparklefoot, even though it didn’t rhyme.

  The rest of the eight elves who had discovered the frozen egg all cheered in agreement. Spudcheeks was right. It was time for Santa to leave and to do his duty, for it was Christmas Eve, the one night of the year when he could not be distracted. Santa nodded and stood up to go, but before he left the room, he felt a tiny tap-tap on his leg. He looked down and saw Sprout the elf standing at his boot, staring up while nervously stroking the baby dinosaur’s smooth scales.

  “Santa, please don’t leave before you name this Christmas dinosaur!” Sprout said ever so sweetly.

  “Hmmmm, a Christmas dinosaur…,” Santa said to himself. A wide, merry smile suddenly grew on his face.

  A Christmas dinosaur!

  Santa cleared his throat, waved for silence, and in his deepest, richest voice spoke these words:

  “My wondrous little North Pole elves,

  You must congratulate yourselves,

  For I believe beyond a doubt

  A miracle has come about.

  It’s sitting right here on the floor,

  Looking like no other dinosaur.”

  All the elves listened with tears welling in their tiny elf eyeballs. It wasn’t often that Santa spoke to them like this, but when he did, boy, did he do it with style!

  He continued:

  “Another year you’ve served me well,

  Through good times and the tough as well.

  But I shall not forget the night

  An egg was dug up from the ice.

  And here he sits, this nameless creature,

  With such fantastic festive features,

  That there is just one name for him—

  Come one, come all, come hear me sing….

  This Christmas dinosaur before us

  Shall henceforth be known as the Christmasaurus!”

  The Christmasaurus let out a long, happy roar, and the North Pole elves replied with a cheer. They sang and danced a merry celebration with their new dinosaur friend long into the night, while Santa delivered presents all around the world. It was a Christmas Eve that none of them would ever forget.

  For the Christmasaurus, growing up in the North Pole was awesomely fun. He would watch the polar bears play Ping-Pong. He’d watch the forest fairies fish for fidgets—little swimming insects that fairies eat as snacks (they taste like chicken). He’d watch the snowmen ice-skate and the walruses waltz.

  But, of course, he spent most of his time with Santa and the eight elves who’d found him: Snozzletrump, Specklehump, Sparklefoot, Sugarsnout, Starlump, Spudcheeks, Snowcrumb, and Sprout. They were like family to the Christmasaurus.

  As the Christmasaurus grew, they looked after him, fed him his daily serving of forty-two mince pies, washed him with the happy tears of fairies (fairy liquid), walked him three times an hour, and did pretty much everything that your mom and dad do for you. Those eight little elves, as well as Santa himself, were the closest thing to parents that the Christmasaurus had, and he loved them all very much indeed.

  But even though Santa and the elves were a wonderful family, the Christmasaurus was sometimes very, very lonely.

  He felt lonely because he was different.

  He was the only dinosaur in the world. There were lots of elves, lots of polar bears, lots of walruses and whales and snowmen and forest fairies…but there was only one of him, and that made him rather sad.

  Whenever the Christmasaurus felt sad, he knew there was only one thing that would cheer him up. He would go and visit his favorite of all the creatures in the North Pole: Santa’s Magnificently Magical Flying Reindeer!

  Santa’s Magnificently Magical Flying Reindeer were the most wondrous creatures you could possibly imagine. Clear your head for a moment, and I’ll help you picture one.

  Imagine a pair of soft, velvety antlers. Now double their softness.

  Imagine a pair of deep, twinkling black eyes. Like a starry sky.

  Imagine a dark brown fur coat speckled with jingly-jangly bells.

  Imagine four bright golden hooves that seem to glow from within.

  Now imagine this creature flying around thirty feet above your head and—voilà! There you have one of Santa’s Magnificently Magical Flying Reindeer.

  The Christmasaurus thought they were magnificent too. He would spend hour after hour just watching them fly around in circles, high over his head. You see, the Christmasaurus had a secret….

  He wished that he could fly up there with them.

  The Christmasaurus thought that if only he could fly like a reindeer, then maybe he wouldn’t be so different. Perhaps one day he might even be al
lowed to pull Santa’s sleigh!

  Well, once that idea had found its way into the Christmasaurus’s head, there wasn’t a fidget’s chance in the North Pole of getting it out! Pulling Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve with the Magnificently Magical Flying Reindeer became the Christmasaurus’s life ambition, and from that moment on, it was all he ever thought about.

  If a reindeer can fly, then so can I! he would think to himself in his dinosaur thoughts. He promised himself that he would do whatever it took to get his scaly dinosaur tail off the ground and into the air with the reindeer.

  So the Christmasaurus started eating the same food the reindeer ate and drinking the same drinks the reindeer drank. He even started sleeping in the stables with the reindeer in the hope that whatever magic made them fly might rub off on him.

  But, you see, it wasn’t as simple as that. There was a special reason why the reindeer could fly, and it wasn’t in their food or their drink. It wasn’t the way they slept, and it wasn’t because of their great velvety antlers or glowing golden hooves. There was a deeper magic at work, and it was the strongest, oldest kind of magic that exists.

  All around the world there are millions of children, just like you, who all know about Santa’s flying reindeer. They don’t just think Santa’s reindeer can fly. Those millions of children believe that Santa’s reindeer can fly. They believe beyond any shadow of a doubt, and belief is the most powerful magic there is. Believing is the only magic that makes the utterly impossible completely possible, and the undoubtedly undoable undeniably doable! And of all the different kinds of belief there are, the belief of a child is by far the most unbelievably unstoppable.

  If all the children in the world suddenly stopped believing in Santa and flying reindeer and all the wonderful things in the North Pole, then all of those fantastic things would pop out of existence like the bursting of a bubble! That’s why believing is so important. It’s what keeps magic alive.