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📖 Father Christmas and the Reindeer Who Had the Hiccups
5 min read
It was Christmas Eve at the North Pole, and everything was nearly ready.
The sleigh had been polished until you could see your face in it. The sacks had been packed and counted and packed again. Mrs Claus had made a flask of hot chocolate and wrapped Father Christmas's scarf twice round his neck, and then a third time, just to be sure.
The reindeer stood in a line in the snow, stamping their hooves and breathing out little clouds. At the very end of the line stood the youngest reindeer of all, whose name was Bramble. This was her first Christmas Eve on the sleigh team, and she was so excited that her tail would not stop wagging.
Pip the elf was doing the final checks with his clipboard.
"Sleigh?" he said. "Shiny. Sacks? Packed. Reindeer? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight..."
"Hic!" said Bramble.
Pip looked up.
"Hic!" said Bramble again, and this time she rose about a foot into the air, all by herself, and landed with a soft flump in the snow.
Oh dear
"Oh dear," said Pip. "Bramble has the hiccups."
"Hic!" agreed Bramble, bouncing up and down.
Now, a reindeer with hiccups is a very serious matter, because every time a flying reindeer hiccups, she goes up. Which is fine if you are standing in a field. It is not so fine if you are in the middle of a team of eight, all harnessed together, trying to fly in a nice straight line.
Father Christmas came out of the workshop, pulling on his big black boots.
"Everything all right, Pip?"
"Hic!" said Bramble, and bobbed up past his nose.
Father Christmas's eyebrows went up, too. "Ah," he said. "I see."
Pip tries everything
Pip knew a lot about hiccups. Well, he knew a little bit. Well, he had heard some things.
"Hold your breath and count to ten," he told Bramble.
Bramble took a huge breath and puffed out her cheeks. Her eyes went wide. Pip counted. "One... two... three..."
At seven, Bramble's cheeks were so round she looked like a furry balloon. At nine, she let all the air out at once with a PFFFFFT, which blew Pip's hat clean off his head.
"Hic!" said Bramble.
"Right," said Pip, picking up his hat. "Plan two. A drink of water."
He fetched a bucket of water. Bramble drank the whole thing, very slowly and very politely, and then said, "Hic!" and floated up so high that Pip had to stand on tiptoe to hold on to her harness.
"Plan three," said Pip, a little desperately. "Think about something else. Quick, Bramble, what's seven add three?"
Bramble thought very hard. Her ears wiggled.
"Ten," she said. "Hic!"
A shout from the stables
By now the other reindeer were trying not to laugh, and the elves had come out to see what was happening. Everyone had an idea.
"Eat a spoonful of honey!" called one elf.
"Stand on one leg!" called another.
"Sing the alphabet backwards!" called a third, who could not actually do that himself.
Bramble tried all of them. She ate the honey, which was delicious. She stood on one leg, which is quite hard when you have four. She started the alphabet backwards and got as far as "Z, Y, X, hic!" before she drifted up into the branches of a fir tree and got snow all over her antlers.
Pip helped her down. Bramble's lip wobbled.
"What if I spoil Christmas Eve?" she whispered. "What if I can't go?"
Father Christmas has a plan
Father Christmas knelt down in the snow beside her, which made his knees creak.
"Bramble," he said softly, "do you know what the very best cure for hiccups is?"
Bramble shook her head. "Hic."
"A really, really good laugh," said Father Christmas. "And I happen to know the silliest thing in the whole North Pole."
He leaned in close and whispered something in Bramble's furry ear.
Nobody else heard what it was. Pip still wonders about it to this day. But Bramble's eyes went wide, and then her nose twitched, and then she let out a snort, and then she was laughing so hard that she rolled over in the snow with all four hooves in the air.
She laughed and laughed until her tummy hurt.
And then she stopped, and sat up, and everyone waited.
Nothing happened.
No hic. No bounce. Just one small reindeer, sitting in the snow, looking very surprised.
"They've gone!" she said.
Off they go
Everyone cheered. Pip threw his hat in the air and caught it on his head, which he had never managed before and has never managed since.
Bramble took her place at the end of the line. Father Christmas climbed into the sleigh, tucked a blanket over his knees, and picked up the reins.
"Ready, everyone?"
The reindeer stamped their hooves. The bells on the harness jingled. And with a whoosh and a sparkle of snow, the sleigh rose into the dark, starry sky, in a perfectly straight line.
Pip waved until they were just a tiny dot.
Then he went inside, made himself a mug of hot chocolate, and sat by the fire.
"I wonder what he whispered," he said to himself.
And somewhere far above the rooftops, very faintly, if you listened carefully, you might just have heard a small reindeer giggling.
The end.
Talking about the story
- What is the silliest thing YOU know? Maybe it would cure the hiccups too.
- Which hiccup cure would you try first?
- Why do you think laughing helped Bramble feel better?