Why Won't Santa Visit Poor Children?

A Christmas story from the Philippines by Roy Thomsitt

 

 

Santa Claus's Reindeer Drink At Estrella Falls, and Di Meets Rudolph

The nine reindeer continued drinking the water, watched patiently by Santa Claus, who was just visible through the golden aura. Di smiled to herself as she watched him. After all her fears of him falling down the well, here he was, just a kilometre from her home.

Santa was aware of her presence, but had given her a moment to adjust her eyes to the gold light. Now he looked across directly at Di, and waved. Di waved back, her bewilderment and awe breaking into an enormous smile.

A moment later, Di was distracted for the first time as a group of about eight macaques, the local monkeys, came bounding across the stepping stone rocks of the stream. Di had seen monkeys there many times before, but never did they cross the stream.

The leader of the monkeys tugged at her arm and looked up at her, an astonished Tina looking on.

"What are you doing here?" asked the monkey, a puzzled look in his eyes.

Di did not know what to say; she did not know what she was doing there and how this was all happening, so what could she say but: "I don't know," giggling as she exchanged glances with Tina.

"Are you Di?" the monkey then asked. The fireflies had kept their secret.

Her giggle became an excited laugh: "Yes, I'm Di. How did you know?"

"I thought so," said the monkey, and it ran back across the stream with the rest of his group following.

When the monkeys reached the other side of the stream, the silence of the night was broken as the word was spread amongst all the creatures around the falls. Like a ripple of applause around the auditorium, the news resounded around the trees, rocks and shores of the pond, in a million tiny voices that merged into one:

"It's Di, it's Di."

Di and Tina looked at each other, thought about it for a moment, and then shrugged their shoulders before looking back to Santa Claus, the reindeer and the sleigh. As they did so, there was a large flash of golden light, as the front sole reindeer came to their side.

Di shielded her eyes, not because of the glare of the golden aura, but because of the glare from the shiny red nose. It was Rudolph.

Behind Rudolph, the sleigh, Santa and the other reindeer, vanished in an instant from view.

All the creatures of the forest now looked at each other with a chattering excitement and shock. In many hundreds of years of Santa Claus coming to Estrella Falls, this had never happened before.

Now, they all knew this was a very special night in the history of the Palawan rainforest. This was the Christmas of all Christmases.

 

 

 

Next: Santa Claus Story (cont)