Santa Was Late This Year was a holiday short story written jointly by members of the Phillips and Como families on November 28, 1996, and attributed to Phillip Como. The story is no longer believed to be extant, although some elements survived in 1997's Rudolph Quits by Ted Phillips.
Summary
The North Pole is preparing for Christmas when Rudolph refuses to offer his services, due to Santa getting "all of the dough." After some other hijinks, Santa manages to get Christmas back on track but has very little time left. He has to fly his sleigh very quickly in order to deliver presents on time.
The Writing Process
In 1996, Teddy Phillips had learned in school about one method of having groups collaborate on writing stories, because the whole class had used the technique to write a single story within the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving 1996.
The technique involves one person writing a single sentence of the story and passing it to the next person. The new person reads the sentence, writes another sentence after it, and folds the previous sentence backwards before passing it along to a third person, so that the third person can only see the immediately preceding sentence. This process continues until everyone has written at least once.
On November 28, 1996, Teddy presented the idea to his family, who thought it would be a fun way to end the evening. Since there were not many members there, they passed the story around a circle multiple times to make it longer.
Every time the story got back around to Teddy, it became obvious to him that it kept veering further and further off-track from whatever he had written previously. Thus, he would use his sentence to try to redirect the narrative back towards the original plot. As he later learned, his cousins likewise used their sentence to subvert the plot entirely, sometimes as a complete nonsequitur to the previous sentence.
When the story was complete, it was David Como's task to read the story aloud. However, as the story read like a mad-lib, he often had to fight to see and to breathe through the tears of his laughter. Teddy was angry at how the story turned out, but ultimately accepted it.
The technique involves one person writing a single sentence of the story and passing it to the next person. The new person reads the sentence, writes another sentence after it, and folds the previous sentence backwards before passing it along to a third person, so that the third person can only see the immediately preceding sentence. This process continues until everyone has written at least once.
On November 28, 1996, Teddy presented the idea to his family, who thought it would be a fun way to end the evening. Since there were not many members there, they passed the story around a circle multiple times to make it longer.
Every time the story got back around to Teddy, it became obvious to him that it kept veering further and further off-track from whatever he had written previously. Thus, he would use his sentence to try to redirect the narrative back towards the original plot. As he later learned, his cousins likewise used their sentence to subvert the plot entirely, sometimes as a complete nonsequitur to the previous sentence.
When the story was complete, it was David Como's task to read the story aloud. However, as the story read like a mad-lib, he often had to fight to see and to breathe through the tears of his laughter. Teddy was angry at how the story turned out, but ultimately accepted it.
Disappearance
Teddy Como typed the story on her computer, adding holiday-themed graphics and borders to the presentation. She printed a copy for the Phillips family to take home with them, leaving the manuscript with the Comos.
Based on surviving data about Ted's Fun Site containing Christmas elements in 1998, it is believed that Santa Was Late This Year was included in the site's "Story Room." However, when the site disappeared in 1999, that digital copy was no longer available.
Within the next year or two, the printed copy held by the Phillips family disappeared, possibly destroyed in the same weather event that damaged Rudolph Quits! in 1998.
The Phillips family requested another copy as the original was no longer extant. Teddy Como copy-pasted the manuscript text into an email to the Phillips family. That email was eventually purged by America Online's mail retention policies.
In 2023, Ted Phillips inquired whether David Como or Teddy Como still had either the original manuscript, the printed version, or a digital copy. However, neither of them remembered the story.
Based on surviving data about Ted's Fun Site containing Christmas elements in 1998, it is believed that Santa Was Late This Year was included in the site's "Story Room." However, when the site disappeared in 1999, that digital copy was no longer available.
Within the next year or two, the printed copy held by the Phillips family disappeared, possibly destroyed in the same weather event that damaged Rudolph Quits! in 1998.
The Phillips family requested another copy as the original was no longer extant. Teddy Como copy-pasted the manuscript text into an email to the Phillips family. That email was eventually purged by America Online's mail retention policies.
In 2023, Ted Phillips inquired whether David Como or Teddy Como still had either the original manuscript, the printed version, or a digital copy. However, neither of them remembered the story.
Categories:
Christmas
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