TIL a female reindeer is a cow, not a doe.<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp;How many years has this night been? Three hundred? Four hundred? A millenia? It's impossible to tell. There is just this single, endless night stretching out to eternity.<br /> Even now, after all this time, I remember back to the moment when that fiend forced his way down my chimney, accusing me of being 'the naughtiest boy'. Boy? BOY?! I was 55! I worked on Wall Street, damn it! But I suppose we are all children before that ageless entity.<br /> He just stood there, laughing that sadistic laugh of his, as I rang the police, but I received only a distorted electronic groan on the other end of the line. I'd grabbed my gun, but the bullets hung frozen in the air, rotating glacially.<br /> And then the antlers had burst from my skull and I was forced into this degrading form.<br /> I try to calculate it as we fly over the rooftops. 2 billion Christians in the world, roughly. Half that for the number of households. Half that for the ones with children. If he spends thirty minutes in each house, obsessively arranging his sooty bootprints before the fireplace, then it adds up to... to... Whichever way I figure it, it always adds up to the same - more time than the human mind can endure.<br /> His whip strikes against my ass and I strain tired muscles, hauling him and his sleigh into the night sky, my curvaceous prow parting the time-frozen snowflakes. I'm forced to fly at the front, motivation for the eight male reindeer behind, dangled before them like a carrot on a stick. Their hot, damp breath tickles over my exposed cheeks, freezing in the cold air, making the furry orbs glitter like snow globes.<br /> The fat bastard yanks on my bridle, turning me West. We've just done Benjamin in Boston. Next up is Bao in Beijing. Then take a left for Beirut.<br /> That's the worst part. The monster has his list in alphabetical order.