“- In preparation for the upcoming Winter festivities, all chocolate based sweets and candies are being sold at a discount starting from October the 18th. It is an unprecedented move, happening a solid month earlier than-”

Chuckling even as he cut off the television, an old, fat man, dressed all in red and with a particularly bushy and impressive white beard, stood up from his comfortable chair by the fireplace. Grabbing the last cookie from his plate, he gulped it down in a few bites and washed it down with a glass of milk even as he walked toward the center of the room.

“Have you heard, Noëlle?”, the man bellowed.”They’re making sales on all chocolate sweets! Now, we just have to take advantage of this to stock up again.”

He waited a bit, expecting to hear back from his wife of 208 years. As the silence grew longer, he frowned thoughtfully.

“Bah. She’s probably busy with the reindeers. They’ve been acting up again, especially Vixen and Cupid.”

Chuckling again as he remembered the upturned barn - all because they couldn’t eat any candy cane before dinner! -, he shrugged and decided to check up on his elves.

Grabbing his hat and upturning it, Santa jumped inside, letting loose a deep belly laugh as he let the fall carry him.

Who knew what kind of mischief they’ve been up to since he last talked with them! Something about a war against Halloween?

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Inside the most secure room of the Santa Claus Hat, the 12 most trusted elves of Nicholas Claus himself were surrounding a table, covered completely in maps, after action reports and graphs.

“Welcome to this 1752th meeting for the War against Halloween. I’d like us to welcome the replacements for Hairy Harry and Tiny Pat, namely one… I’m sorry, whose chicken scratch are those? Oh, right, that’d explain it.

Sleepy Joe, who you can see napping under the table, and Tally Jack. Always glad to see you, Jack!”

“Hey John! Congrats on the promotion, impressive to have become the 1755th chairman in only 3 sessions!”

“Yes, well… You know our attrition rates in the war against the Dark Night. Only Agatha and Caesar are older than me, and that’s because I don’t think they’ve left the war room. Ever.”

Agatha giggled daintily, the 1950 years old Elf unbothered by the accusations. Caesar, nose already in Madame Noëlle’s eggnog, gave him the finger and kept on drinking.

“In any case… I’m glad to announce we've managed to strike a great blow against the cursed night! Through a mix of bribes, blackmail, and begging, we’ve spread Christmas themed songs and ads all over the greatest cities on the planet. And made sweets easily affordable!”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“What about the non Christmas celebrating ones, hmm?”, Caesar inquired, a brow raised even as he kept noisily slurping his beverage. “Can’t see us managing to snag any of the big ones, like Byzantion… Sorry, Constantinople? Istanbul? Can’t keep up with all those change of names.”

“... Yes, thank you, Caesar. We’ve managed to do this for all Christmas celebrating countries, along with Pakistan, Taiwan, and Japan, though that last one was a given. Even if their celebrations are… most peculiar.”

A short silence followed, as they remembered the country's choice of celebration. Taking advantage of it, John started up the projector, showing their updated tasklist.

“As you can see, Task 8 and 9 have been successfully achieved. All that remains… is task 10: The Great Candy Robbery!”.

Naught but silence and the chirp of Conscience, the odd winter cricket that’s been living here since before the war room even existed, answered him.

“Seriously!? Why the lack of enthusiasm?! I even made pamphlets!”

Sleepy Joe blearily looked up at him, before grabbing something off the floor and putting it on the tables and falling back asleep with a dull thud.

Looking at the stack of untouched pamphlets, John could only sigh.

“Oh. That’d explain it. Well! Task 10, aka The Great Candy Robbery, is very simple! Phase 1: We group up all the sweets, candies, and cakes in the world! And Phase 2: We steal them, so that no one can be given anything during the night of Halloween!”

Looking down at them from his perch on the table that he climbed on during his explanations, John smugly awaited the awed applause of his, now informed, peers.

“Quick question, John dearie. If you wanted to stop the humans from having sweets for the All-hallows Eve… Why did you ramp up candy production all over the world, and arranged to have them sold for cheap?”

John visibly flinched, climbing down the table and patting his clothes down.

“Ah… That was because… Erm…”

“He got greedy and wanted to have more candies to steal?”

“Since he wasn’t here for the start of the plan, he doesn’t know!”

“Eh, my bet is that the empty brained fool didn’t think anything beyond it being ‘cool’ to influence the humans.”

A sudden boom at the door made them all jump, twisting around to look at the intruder. “Santa Claus is coming, everyone runs!”

The sudden shout from timid Tim was enough to leave near everyone dumbfounded… For 2 seconds. Then, in a mad scramble of flailing limbs, shouted cursed, and terrified wailing, the war room was left empty of all occupants, Old Caesar and Agatha far ahead of the of the rest of the pack.

… After a few seconds, a knock and twist of the knob heralded the arrival of Santa, cheeks still flushed from the mad dash down into his hat.

“Oh, I see the little rascals already left. Though…”

Looking below the table, Nick spotted the slumbering form of Joe, still sprawled out without a care in the care. With a smile, Santa grabbed the nearby blanket, covering his foolish elf and letting him to his nap.

“Honestly… what troublesome little workers I have. How am I going to explain all this to Noëlle? She’ll twist my ear off this time!”