Annual Elf Mating Urge Falls on Yule In an unfortunate twist of circumstance, Christmas Day coincides this year with Blo’Parr—the irresistible biological urge that Santa’s elves feel to mate. Occurring once every three hundred days, Blo’Parr is not a problem for those who have already paired off into elf mating groups of two or more. But for those who have not yet found their Blo’Parr partner or partners, the painful genital swelling couldn’t come at a worse time. "You try checking a ‘Naughty and Nice’ list with your pants full of fire," laments Lionel, an elf who works in List Check: Naughty. Adding to his misery, the heavy seasonal workload does not provide many opportunities to meet a potential mate. "There’s a girl who works in the lunchroom," explains Lionel, "whose name is Sheila. I find her very appealing—dark hair, prominent nose, sharply pointed ears. But she likes some guy in Sleigh Loading." Sheila confirms this. "There’s this guy Marco in Sleigh Loading," she sighs dreamily while dishing egg nog-flavored soft-serve yogurt, "who I’m going to Blo’Parr with. He’s actually Aft Sleigh, but he’s working his way up to Port Sleigh, where the real money is. He’s also in a band called ‘Slay Ride,’ which rocks. I’m not his Primary Blo’Parr, I’m number nine, so I’ve got a while to wait. He was joking that he wants to have us all at once." She smiles, but it slowly fades. "Yeah, he’s a joker." During Blo’Parr, the male and female elf bite one another repeatedly to test fertility, then mate in a frenzy of bleats and high-pitched chittering. After the male has fertilized the female, she releases her eggs in a thick airborne cloud. If these eggs can avoid being eaten by predators (penguins), they drift to the snowy earth and attach to the tundra. Transforming into polyps, the nascent larva feed off the plentiful North Pole bacterium until budding asexually into immature elves, typically two to twenty in number. Those elves then devour one another until a single elf remains. But what happens if the call to Blo’Parr goes unanswered? "Same as last year for me," Lionel shrugs. "Get a magazine, and wait another three hundred days."

		Extreme Elves: What They Do With a Jack-In-The-Box Will Shock You! While many elves prefer to spend their spare time in quiet pursuits like snow stroking and ice gnawing, others have a hot fever burning their brains that compels them to risk complete physical annihilation on a daily basis. These are Extreme Elves. They laugh at death. The Extreme Elf craze du jour is "Jack-in-the-Boxing." It started off as a playful bit of mischief, wherein an elf would open a jack-in-the-box facing another elf, and when the toy popped out, it would alarm the victim. After tinkering with this basic principle, a group of industrious elves came up with the current sport, where razor-tipped poisoned jack-in-the-boxes are opened at elves on an opposing team while hurtling madly down a thousand-foot gorge. One of the top "Jack-in-the-Boxers" in the field today is an elf named Marco: "I can’t explain it to someone who’s not into it, and if you’re not into it, you suck!" Marco has lost thirty-seven teammates over the last two weeks, but one that has withstood both the venom and the plunge is a female elf named Ethyl. "Man, Ethyl is outstanding. She’s old enough to be my mom but she’s, like, so full of life, totally fearless." He pauses, then adds meaningfully: "I’m in love with her." Just then, Ethyl returns from fixing herself a steaming cup of egg nog in the kitchen. She pats Marco on the shoulder as he shuffles nervously. "Oh, Marco," she chuckles, "You’re just a silly little elf who works in Sleigh Loading. Don’t you think I have greater ambitions than that in a lover?" As Marco lowers his head, Ethyl turns her gaze longingly toward a massive castle on the top of a high hill—the mountain retreat of Mrs. Claus. When reached for comment, Ethyl’s husband Frank was not aware of her "Jack-in-the-Boxing" activities. In fact, he didn’t know she had left the house. "Ethyl’s gone?" he asked, arching an eyebrow. "Well. Guess I’ll clear away her dishes, then."

More of interest to elves:
Articles 3 and 4

Also by Christopher Painter:
Building the Perfect Salmon
The Box Set of the Year
The Casting Department Has Spoken