"Hooray! Hooray!" Lumpy the heffalump squealed with delight as he skidded down the snowy lane. Big flakes of soft, silvery, snow began to float down from the sky like Dave Mustaine after a serious acid trip.
"Let's see how many snowflakes we can catch on our tongues," he said to his best buddy Roo.
Roo and Lumpy were walking home from school. It had freshly snowed during the long school day of studying Native American art and fractions, and Lumpy was ready to make the most of it.
"Stupid snow," Roo muttered and kicked a chunk of ice.
"Snow is glorious Roo!" Lumpy cried and threw himself in a bank of it.
"It's just going to be all dirty and nasty looking by tomorrow morning," Roo muttered. "Lumpy, get out of that bank. You look ridiculous. You'll catch your death."
"Blimey! You are worse than my mother," Lumpy spat. "Come on Roo. The snow is fun. We can go to my place and build a snow fort. Perhaps this weekend my old man will take us up to Boyne Highlands to go skiing." Lumpy's father owned a cottage up by Boyne Highlands Ski Resort. Lumpy loved spending the weekends up there. Weekends at Boyne meant skiing from eight in the morning until nine o'clock at night. It meant checking out snow babes in the warming huts. It meant eating a pot of Dad's homemade chili, and drinking hot-spiced wine, laced with cloves. Only at Boyne, Lumpy was allowed to drink hot wine after a long day on the slopes. Only at Boyne, was Lumpy allowed to join in on nightly poker and gin rummy to win scratch offs. Only at Boyne, was Lumpy allowed to stay up and watch good, wholesome, movies such as Warlock and Aspen Extreme. Only at Boyne, did Lumpy get to sleep in a sweet looking log bunk bed. Since Lumpy was the host, he always got to sleep in the top bunk, with Roo or his cousin Ned in the bottom. Lumpy loved those cold, Boyne nights with Roo. The boys would tell ghost stories, make hockey bets, discuss masturbation, and eat honey-roasted chestnuts.
"Boyne is lame," Roo said.
"Lame!" Lumpy cried in horror. "Boyne rocks. Boyne is the shit."
"Dude," Roo said. "I'll tell you what the shit is. Vail is the shit. Last Christmas break my old man took me to Vail. Boyne is a fucking ant hill compared to Vail."
"Well maybe Tigger's friend who has all the snowmobiles will be around and we could go snowmobiling," Lumpy suggested. Tigger was good friends with Raiders receiver Randy Moss's nephew Pete Moss. Randy had a vacation cabin in the Hundred Acre Woods, loaded with all sorts of toys. Sometimes the boys would come over to snow mobile.
"Nah, Pete's not in town," Roo replied. "All this snow is going to do is turn into gray slush. I'm going to have to shovel the walk when I get home, and the accumulation won't even be enough to get the schools closed."
"Perhaps," said Lumpy sadly. "I guess so." He then brightened. "But the snow does mean that Christmas is coming. Aren't you excited?"
Roo shrugged.
"Not really. The break from school will be nice. The mincemeat pie is always tasty."
"You are missing the presents!" Lumpy exclaimed. "Aren't you excited about your presents?"
"My dad is the most prominent defense lawyer in the shit-ass state of Michigan," Roo said. "I get presents all the time."
"Yeah but, don't you enjoy the suspense of not knowing what is in that box, under all the wrapping paper?" Lumpy was shocked at Roo's passiveness.
"No." Roo said flatly. "I know what I want, I always get what I want, so it's under the wrapping paper. I get what I ask for, plus the token parcel of socks and underpants, and some more cock sucking Legos that I no longer play with. This year I want the X Box 360, and some of the cool games to go with it, and some new soccer gear."
"Did you ask Santa for the X Box?" Lumpy asked.
"No," Roo said with disgust. "Why in the hell would I do that?"
"So you get it," retorted Lumpy.
"My dad will get it," Roo said.
"So Santa will bring you the games?" Lumpy asked.
"Lumpy, you know very well that there is no Santa Claus. It's all a hoax for children," Roo explained.
"There is to a Santa Claus," Lumpy defended. "Why they even have a special box at the post office to mail your letter to him."
"That's all bullshit," Roo shrugged. "Your letter gets put in a box, and the box gets dumped into the recycling.
"That's not true!" Lumpy cried. "Last year I asked for a build your own Star Wars battleship, and I got it."
"Your parents got it for you," Roo replied.
"No they bought me remote controlled submarines."
"And theyalso got you the battleship," Roo corrected. "And any other shit that Santa supposedly brought you. All Santa is a commercialized pawn for retail stores to get more money from stupid parents trying to get everything that their child asked for. Why do you think they have toy drives for the children that are poor, or in hospitals? Santa could just bring them what they want, but since there is no Santa, they have to rely on people donating the presents."
Lumpy thought about this for a minute. Could it be true? Lumpy had assumed that Santa visited all children, everywhere. But why did they have toy drives? If a kid was poor, he could simply go to Santa and ask for the gifts he or she wanted, and receive it. Why did people need to donate?
"Maybe it's because their parents can't get them anything, and it looks bad if everything is from Santa," he guessed weakly. Roo shook his head.
"It's because there is no one to get gifts for them. There is no Santa, or reindeer, or elves. If there were a Santa there would be no children out there with nothing under the tree. There would be no families with no food on the table, or heat in the house. Santa would fix it all. Nobody fucking knows if you've been bad or good all year. Last year I was a total dick. A dick all the time! I egged the house of an old lady dying of breast cancer, treated my mom like a slave, stole a few cans of Dad's beer from the fridge, pissed on a war memorial, lied in the confessional at church, tripped a cripple- and I still got everything I wanted."
Lumpy had no answer to Roo's logic. They walked the rest of the way in silence. Lumpy no longer felt like jumping in snow banks, and making snow angels. He suddenly felt worn and pissed off that he had to freeze his ass off in the bitter cold.
"Well there must be a Santa," Lumpy said when they reached Roo's house. "I just know there is."
"According to Eeyore, you are just one of those mislead pieces of shit that has to believe some uneducated fluff to feel good, like people who believe in heaven," said Roo.
"I know there's a Santa," Lumpy said forcefully. "I can prove it. Between just you and me, NOT my parents. The one thing that I really want for Christmas is to meet Peyton Manning. I will tell Santa, not my parents, and we'll see if he delivers. Peyton Manning can't be bought in a store. Only a miracle, the miracle of Santa could bring him to my house on Christmas day."
"You're on Lumpy," Roo snorted. "Not even Jesus could bring Peyton Manning to your house to meet you. If you can't come through I want your sweet leather Dale Earnhardt Jr. jacket."
"Fine." Lumpy spat. "If I win, then I want your new X Box."
"Deal," said Roo. The boys drew up a contract and signed it. It was a done deal.