LETTERS FROM KRAMPUS: The 2025 Preamble

(The 10th anniversary year of "Letters from Krampus" begins officially next Sunday, November 30th, but the mood has arrived early.)

The thing I hate most about sugar plum fairies is their endless chatter; they are NOT sweetness and light and they do NOT dance. That imbecile Tchaikovsky owed them a favor for saving him from the sack repeatedly and so he set a lie to music in the janky dross he called a ballet; if I meet him in the afterlife, I'll make him wish he'd picked a different title. Once a child is sugar plumbed, they are protected; let it stand as a tribute to all of my maturity, personal growth, and deep benevolence that I have pledged myself to hold a grudge about this for as long as I may live. I am post-economy flight(s) with a zillion layovers from Florida to the North Pole; I am exhausted from sustaining my glamour, and a sugar plumb fairy is now yammering incessantly about recent changes to the good children package delivery process (and its implications for sacking) herding me into an office. I grab hold of the door jamb and lean down into its tiny face. I haven't brushed my teeth since Zurich. "I'm going to rest," I say (drawing out the exhale at the last to really give it a visceral understanding of airplane food), "and then I will seek out the Kringle for a quick convo." The fairy is blinking back melted sugar tears and I feel satisfied. As I turn, I drag my hooves across the welcome mat and scrape off five of the letters; now, it simply says "me", which is the only warning I need to send.