By Nicole H.

Hi Boo,

Here’s my *short* Christmas story.

When I was 16, I was just finishing up the Leaders in Training Program offered through the City of Nanaimo’s Parks and Recreation.  One of our final events involved the whole group of us helping with the Children’s Christmas Party where Santa himself makes a guest appearance — on skates!  I volunteered to be one of Santa’s skating elves.  The city requested our sizes and ordered our costumes for us.  On the day of the event, I changed into my costume — but to my surprise the skirt for the elf costume was insanely short.  Even with tights, I still wasn’t able to bend over.  There was no saving the costume, so I wore it as it was.  Kids were falling all over the place, trying to get close to Santa, but I couldn’t do anything to help them.  All I could do was just kind of shuffle along beside Santa, using candy canes as crowd control.  I’m not sure that the ‘sexy elf’ costume was ever re-ordered after that year.