How Santa Claus became happy again
Santa was sad. He just didn't really enjoy the sleigh ride any more. How could he make the children of the world happy when he himself was so unhappy, he thought to himself.
It had all started in the summer when he was presented with his new sledge. Technology does not stop at flying sledges with reindeer. The new model was controlled by a computer and a display in the form of a "tablet" was used to preselect the speed and direction. The technology worked perfectly during the test runs. As soon as Santa had set the speed, the reindeer trotted off in the desired gear. Thanks to the sophisticated computer control system and the direct transmission of signals to the draft animals, the deceleration also worked without a hitch. The technicians assured him that the animals would have to exert themselves less, would need less food and would also produce less "output".
The only problem was that Santa didn't enjoy the whole thing from the start. He missed the direct contact with the animals, the feedback when they initially resisted, or the restlessness they conveyed when the path threatened to become unsafe. It was simply different to control his reindeer with a bridle than with a computer signal.
But nobody wanted to listen to him, after all, the modern approach saved time and in the medium term the sleigh could even move autonomously on certain journeys, which would leave Santa Claus more time to finish the last presents in the back of the sleigh or to take last-minute requests into account. After all, "customer satisfaction" was the most important thing.
And then came the Christmas season, the cold and the snow. When Santa loaded up his modern sleigh and was about to set off, the computer produced a cryptic error message that read something like this: "Sensor 0145 not working". The whole load wouldn't move, the animals became impatient. Nothing worked any more.
Thank goodness Santa had taken precautions. He got his old sleigh out of the shed, hitched up the four reindeer as he had done every year before, reloaded the presents and drove off, or rather flew off.
And how happy he was. He could feel his animals again, they responded directly to his every manual impulse, the feel was right again. And of course the presents arrived on time. Perhaps the food consumption was a little higher than with the computer-controlled sleigh, but the old-fashioned approach was temperature-resistant and created much more "driving pleasure". And Santa didn't want to wrap presents in the back of an autonomous flying sleigh anyway, as it would have made him sick.
We wish all our readers a peaceful and harmonious Christmas!
P.S. If you have identified any parallels with the main theme of this year's annual magazine ("The joy of shifting gears"), then this is probably no coincidence ...
