Stealth Ninja Santas

It’s nearly Christmas, and therefore time for the annual Secret Santa Cookie Drop Run. This year’s exercise in advanced sneaking and delivering  techniques involved one of the nephews from last year’s run together with his next-down sister, who was experiencing her first secret Christmas stealth manoeuvres. My Mum (their grandma) had done all the baking in readiness, and she and Dad had constructed a list of “victims”. Mum had also adjusted the costumes for the rather shorter arms and legs of the junior Santas … although my niece wisely decided to eschew the beard (in order not to chew the beard, given the tendency of its fluffy bits to manage to be ingested) and thus designated herself an elf instead. As senior Santa it was my job to train and coordinate the approach and exit strategies—the former characterised by some use of cover such as bushes and parked cars, but often by just brazenly walking up to the house, and the latter characterised by running like crazy and shouting “Ho Ho Ho!” if required (and, having been a little poorly for most of this month, I was even less capable of sprinting than usual).

Dad again took on the role of getaway driver, and this time had the engine running in anticipation of our hasty return and need for speedy departures. We also managed to avoid getting too lost … mostly … although a house we were looking for managed to disappear entirely (we had the number, but the sequence of houses skipped that one … which was odd, because I know we delivered to those people last year*).

We had the usual friendly waves to random passersby, a close encounter or two with victims, and we were probably identified at a couple of places, in general if not in specifics … since it is likely that some of the victims would recognise Dad’s car. However, as you can see from the photos above and below, any identikit photo of the Stealth Ninja Santas is unlikely to result in the certain identification of the actual delivery agents.

* It turns out we had the wrong number, probably last year as well, but last year I think I must have double checked the online phone directory and found the correct address, whereas this year I remembered the house where we’d delivered things last year, but assumed that we’d got it wrong and didn’t think to do the double checking. Oh well, we just found another victim instead.