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Tales from the dump
with Walt Humphries
Friday, December 17, 2004
That pale blue glow you can see on the horizon some nights means Santa's workshop is working overtime.
They are busy there, trying to get all the toys and gifts ready for that special night we call Christmas Eve.
Now, one of the questions that no one seems to ask is, where do all the raw materials come from that go into the making of all those presents? Sure, everyone knows about Santa's many little elves, because they show up in all the stories and movies, but believe you me, none of it would happen without all the merry little gnomes who help Santa out.
It is the gnomes who are the true heroes and tireless workers of Christmas. It is the gnomes who collect and process all the raw materials that are needed for all those gifts. It is about time the gnomes got a little bit of the credit that they so rightly deserve.
The Society of Geological Gnomes map the planet and the Prospector and Developers Association of Gnomes find the deposits. So if it wasn't for the brave, adventurous and hard working geologist gnomes and prospector gnomes, this story wouldn't even have a beginning.
The NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mining gnomes and the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgical gnomes, are the ones who mine and refine the iron, copper, nickel, gold, silver, aluminum and all the other metals, minerals and gems so necessary for Christmas.
Then there are the forest gnomes, who harvest and process all of the wood and forest products needed. There are the farming gnomes who grow and process all the farm products required, especially those needed to create edible treats.
Finally, there are the oil and gas gnomes who get the fuel needed to run the whole operation and also refine some of that oil into all the plastics that are required.
As the gnomes like to say "If it isn't grown, then it is mined. However, even if it is grown, it needs metal machinery and mineral fertilizers, which are mined and you need the prospectors and geologists to find all of dem mines."
Not only do the elves need the raw materials to make all those gifts and presents, they also need wooden and metal tools in order to make them. If it wasn't for the gnomes, Santa wouldn't even have a sled to carry the gifts in. When Christmas first got started and Santa Claus started giving out gifts, most of the raw materials were just picked up from the surface of the planet by the hunter and gatherer gnomes. However, as the holiday grew and the human population increased, the gnomes really got to work supplying Santa.
Santa and the gnomes are very ecologically minded and they realized that producing raw materials and then just throwing the products away wasn't an ecologically sound idea.
It was, after all, the gnomes who originally came up with the idea to reduce, reuse and recycle.
So now many of the gnomes work at recycling and salvaging materials from human garbage dumps. They even mine a few of the older larger dumps.
So this Christmas, as you celebrate the holidays, raise a glass and drink a toast to all the happy hardworking gnomes who made it all possible.
- Walt Humphries is a well-known Yellowknife artist and prospector
