Elf On The (Sad) Shelf

Cold and depressing aren't words you should expect from an elf on christmas. Not from the Shoe Making elves, not from Santa's elves. No one talks about the Cookie Making elves. The cookie factory is quiet. Cookies should be happy, uplifting. Our supposedly "homemade" cookies are no longer such. While the humans are on break, their factories are shut down. We become the providers. We work as you rest. We get no break, no pay, no health benefits, not even insurance. While you humans are enjoying your hot chocolate, and playing with snow, we work twenty hours a day in a factory that value their products more than the safety of their workers. Temperatures of less than -49°C, with no heaters, no doors - they don't even let us stay in the oven room, the only room that has heat. No, the North Pole is not like it seems. No legends or stories of us cookie elves. The others get to stay inside, while we work in non-insulated oak trees. There is no safety, no love, no care. The Cookie Making elves have it the worst. But we power dear old fat Santa. We make the cookies that Mrs. Claus say are hers. No recognition, not from Mr. Claus himself. No one even knows why the elves that disappear and get kidnapped are also the elves that appear in the Cookie Oak Tree. No one cares.