Santa Threatens to Skip Sequatchie Crossing After Being Told to Go Back Where You Came From

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Act I – The Comment That Broke Christmas

Sequatchie Crossing had survived a lot of things:

• the Great Corn Festival Funnel Cake Fire,

• the time the Dollar General flooded but kept the aisles open, and

• the year the town accidentally double-booked the Christmas parade and a funeral procession.

But no one was prepared for the day Santa Claus seriously considered skipping the entire valley because of one sentence.

It started on a Tuesday afternoon in early December, which is when most of the town’s emergencies occur. The sky was that cold, flat gray that means the weather can’t decide whether to snow, sleet, or just make everyone’s mood worse.

Without warning-unless you count the faint jingling that sounded like a Salvation Army bell stuck in surround sound-a red sleigh descended over the ridge line and landed in the gravel turnoff next to the courthouse.

The landing was not subtle. Gravel sprayed. A few pigeons relocated. At least one car alarm went off, despite no one in town having admitted to owning a car with an alarm.

Clovis Strickland was sweeping the courthouse sidewalk like he did every afternoon. No one had hired him. The county had never officially endorsed this arrangement. But Clovis considered himself the last line of defense between “the people” and “whatever nonsense the government’s up to this week,” and a broom is cheaper than a badge.

He squinted up at the sleigh, eyes narrowing into suspicion.

The sleigh door-if you can call the side of a sleigh a door-opened, and out stepped Santa Claus. Actual Santa. Real red suit, real white beard, boots that had seen more chimneys than most people see invoices.

He smiled warmly. “Ho, ho, ho! Merry-”

Clovis jabbed the broom toward him like a bayonet. “Now hold on.”

Santa froze. This was not how it usually went.

“Ho, ho… what?”

“You can’t just land your… your vehicle,” Clovis said, waving his broom toward the sleigh, “on public property without clearing it with somebody. There’s procedure.”

Santa blinked. “I fly a magical sleigh pulled by reindeer. The FAA and I have an understanding.”

Clovis shook his head. “I don’t care what California rules you brought with you. You can’t just drop in outta nowhere and expect us to roll out the red carpet.”

Santa’s brow furrowed. “I’m not from California. I’m from the North Pole.”

From the bench under the maple tree, three older ladies-Miss Evelyn, Miss Pearl, and Miss Jean-watched like they were at the good part of a soap opera.

“Is that him?” Miss Pearl whispered.
“That looks like him,” Miss Jean replied.
“Or it’s Larry from the Lions Club,” said Miss Evelyn. “He still has that suit from 1987.”

Santa spread his arms. “I’m here on a pre-Christmas route inspection! It’s… it’s in the handbook. I check rooftops, note who’s installed security systems that try to tase my reindeer, and update the Nice/Naughty table.”

Clovis snorted. “Well, nobody told me you were coming. You just dropped out of the sky like some kind of government drone with a beard.”

Santa tried again. “I bring presents to the children here. Every year. For generations.”

Clovis’s voice went louder, for the benefit of the courthouse windows and any potential federal agents hiding behind them.

“That’s what they all say. Next thing you know, you’re scanning license plates and counting how many deer tags we really used this season.”

Then he said it. The sentence that ricocheted around the spiritual, emotional, and social media atmosphere of Sequatchie Crossing.

“Why don’t you go back to where you came from?”

Time stopped.

Santa’s jaw fell open. Rudolph, who had been nose-deep in the courthouse shrubbery, jerked his head up and stared. The three ladies on the bench gasped so hard one of their purses fell to the ground and spilled peppermints everywhere.

Santa’s cheeks, already rosier than normal, turned downright alarming.

“I… beg your pardon?” he asked.

Clovis shrugged, utterly unaware. “I just mean if you’re gonna be dropping in like an unannounced inspection, you oughta go back to your headquarters or whatever and fill out the right paperwork. We don’t do random flyovers here. Not since the solar farm thing.”

“So you think,” Santa said slowly, “that I, Santa Claus, am some sort of… regulatory agent?”

“I think anybody who comes from the sky in December unscheduled is either the Air Force, the cable company, or trouble.”

The three bench ladies slid down a little lower, sensing this was becoming historic.

“Go back where you came from,” Clovis repeated, nodding firmly, like a man finishing a prayer.

Santa took a breath that sounded like someone unzipping a winter coat aggressively.

“In all my centuries,” he said, voice trembling, “I have been misunderstood, misquoted, and mistaken for a department store employee… but I have never been told to ‘go back to where I came from.’”

“First time for everything,” Clovis replied.

Santa turned to his reindeer, thrown.

“Did you hear that?” he asked them.

Rudolph snorted.
Blitzen rolled his eyes.
Comet, who’d seen worse in Florida, just chewed on a stray weed.

Santa pointed an outraged mitten at the town.

“That’s it. I’m filing a formal complaint. This whole area just got downgraded to probationary Christmas status.”

Miss Evelyn whispered to Miss Pearl, “Is that worse than getting coal?”
Miss Pearl whispered back, “I think it means Dollar Tree stockings.”
Miss Jean crossed herself. She wasn’t even Catholic.

Santa climbed back into the sleigh, muttering something about “regional rudeness metrics” and “reindeer hazard pay.”

Sequatchie Crossing did not yet realize it, but Christmas had just been put on the naughty list.

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Act II – The Panic in the Fellowship Hall

The first official confirmation that Santa was mad came, naturally, through the local rumor network, which is faster than the internet but less fact-checked.

By 3:30 p.m., the story had been retold six times and now sounded like this:

“Clovis told Santa to get off government property without a permit and suggested he ‘return to his place of origin for proper documentation,’ and now Santa’s boycotting Sequatchie County.”

Reverend Peeler, who had been peacefully reviewing his Advent sermon on “Peace on Earth Even When Your Cousins Are Coming Over,” answered his ringing phone.

“Reverend,” Trixie Jo Bartlett said without preamble, “is it a sin if I strangle Clovis with Christmas lights? Just hypothetically.”

“Trixie Jo,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose, “what happened?”

She laid it all out. By the time she got to “go back where you came from,” he was already looking up at the nativity scene like, “Lord, You seeing this?”

“That’s… not ideal,” he said.

“Not ideal?” she snapped. “My kids already think Santa stopped coming to Uncle Ray’s because of his sports betting app. If he skips all of us, I’ll have two children, a furious husband, and three grandmothers storming the parsonage with pitchforks and side dishes.”

Within the hour, the Fellowship Hall filled like it was hosting a funeral potluck and a city council meeting at the same time.

Mabel Dean Ashcroft, who had become the unofficial Director of All Situations Several Years Ago and nobody had managed to replace her, stood at the front.

“We have a crisis on our hands,” she said, hand firmly planted on the lectern.

On the dry-erase board behind her, someone had written:

Agenda:

1. Confirm Santa is mad

2. Figure out who made Santa mad

3. Blame Clovis

4. Fix it before word gets out to North Pole HR

Clovis sat in a metal chair in the front row, arms crossed, looking like an unrepentant defendant on a daytime judge show.

“I didn’t mean he couldn’t come here,” he said loudly. “I just wanted him to respect process.”

“Clovis,” Mabel said, “you told the most powerful gift-distribution entity on Earth to go back where he came from.”

He shrugged. “Well, he should.”

Boot Barnes leaned over from his chair. “Why is that, exactly?”

“Security,” Clovis said. “You can’t just let any bearded man with livestock float down into town. Next thing you know we’ve got reindeer living under the bridge and ‘federal agencies’ camping out down by the river.”

Trixie Jo shot up from her seat.

“Clovis Strickland,” she said, voice shaking, “if you cost my kids their Christmas, I will personally change your Wi-Fi password and never tell you what it is.”

The room murmured in horror. That was the modern equivalent of exile.

Reverend Peeler cleared his throat.

“Look,” he said, “Sequatchie Crossing has said some… colorful things to outsiders over the years. But this is Santa. He’s not a developer from Nashville. He’s not building a megastore. He is, for better or worse, the man who controls the stocking supply chain.”

Mabel stepped back to the lectern.

“We need to do three things,” she said, ticking off on her fingers.
“First, figure out exactly what Santa heard. Second, issue a sincere apology. Third, convince him not to punish our children for the actions of one broom-wielding adult.”

From the back, someone shouted, “Fourth, we should probably bake something!”

“Yes,” Mabel said. “We will deploy baked goods as emotional leverage.”

There was a collective nod. Sequatchie Crossing residents may not understand international diplomacy, but they deeply understood that a warm pecan pie could fix almost anything.

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Act III – Elves, Emails, and Reputation Management

While Sequatchie Crossing argued with itself in the Fellowship Hall, the North Pole was having its own emergency.

Santa sat at a wooden desk carved with candy cane motifs and reindeer doodles. Beside him, his Chief Compliance Elf, Tinsel, scrolled through a glowing spreadsheet titled:

“Regional Cheer Index – Q4 Report”

“Sir,” Tinsel said, tapping the scroll, “we’ve had a spike in what our metrics categorize as ‘hospitality incidents.’”

Santa grumbled. “I got told to go back where I came from, Tinsel. Me. The big guy.”

Tinsel winced. “Yes, that’s… that’s a Tier 3 Rudeness Event.”

“Tier 3?!” Santa boomed. “What’s Tier 4?”

“That’s when they file a noise complaint about the sleigh.”

Santa slumped in his chair. “Has that happened?”

Tinsel coughed into his hand. “Germany. 1998. We don’t talk about it.”

Santa stood and paced, boots thudding across the wooden floor.

“I put in the time, Tinsel,” he said. “Centuries of service. I master chimney tech. I adapt to keyless entry. I learn about Ring doorbells. I let people call me ‘the holiday man’ in those neighborhoods with the HOA that’s scared of joy. And now I land one time without a permit and I’m treated like a suspicious drone.”

“Sir,” Tinsel said carefully, “we did get a notification from Sequatchie Crossing.”

He held up a parchment envelope hastily sealed with what looked like caramel.

Santa snatched it and broke the seal. Glitter and a stale peppermint fell out.

Inside was a letter, written in Mabel Dean’s careful, looping handwriting:

Dear Santa,

We, the undersigned residents of Sequatchie Crossing, would like to officially clarify that Clovis does not speak for all of us. In fact, he barely speaks for himself, and on most days he shouldn’t.

Please do not skip us. Our children are innocent. Our adults are… learning.

Yours in seasonal desperation,
Mabel Dean Ashcroft
and Most of the Town, Except Clovis Who Refused to Sign

Santa read it twice, then sat back down with a sigh.

Tinsel cleared his throat. “This is not the first time you’ve had… an incident, sir.”

Santa frowned. “Oh, here we go. You’re going to bring up the Michigan thing again.”

“They tried to weigh the sleigh with a livestock scale,” Tinsel said. “We’ll be processing that trauma for decades.”

He hopped up on the desk, expression softening.

“Look,” he said, “what’s bothering you? Really. Is it the comment? Or is it that you’re tired of being treated like a seasonal décor item instead of a person?”

Santa looked at him.

“I got called ‘content’ last week,” he said flatly.

Tinsel recoiled. “Oh, sir… I’m so sorry.”

Santa gestured helplessly.

“They tag me in videos. They use my name to sell socks. Meanwhile, I’m trying to manage global logistics in 24 hours with an ancient paper list and a team that still thinks AOL is cutting-edge.”

“So,” Tinsel said thoughtfully, “you want respect.”

“I want basic politeness,” Santa said. “And maybe fewer laser lights aimed at Dasher’s eyes.”

Tinsel nodded. “What if Sequatchie Crossing could prove it? That they do respect you?”

Santa snorted. “How, exactly? A Facebook post?”

Tinsel’s eyes twinkled.

“Actually, sir, that’s already happening.”

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Back in Sequatchie Crossing, the “Save Our Santa” campaign had lit up the local social media ecosystem like a tangle of Christmas lights plugged into the wrong outlet.

On the “Sequatchie Crossing Enquirer and Complaint Group”, threads exploded:

• “CLARIFICATION: NOBODY WANTS SANTA DEPORTED”

• “Poll: Should Clovis be temporarily banned from talking to magical beings?”

• “If Santa skips us, does that include the folks up on Ridge Road who already get Amazon packages 3 days late?”

Teenagers started a hashtag: #SantaWe’reSorry.

One particularly dramatic post, from a high school junior named Laney, read:

“Dear Santa, please don’t judge us by Clovis. He still thinks Bluetooth is a dental condition.”

By midnight, screenshots of Sequatchie Crossing apologies had started floating through obscure corners of the internet in meme form.

The town didn’t know it, but the North Pole has interns. And interns have phones. And interns send screenshots.

Tinsel watched them cascade across a glittering orb on his desk, each post floating like a glowing snowflake.

“Sir,” he said, “for what it’s worth, they’re trying.”

Santa rubbed his beard, watching a video of Trixie Jo’s kids holding a sign that read:

“SANTA PLEASE DON’T SKIP US WE STILL BELIEVE A LITTLE BIT”

He sighed again, but this time it was softer.

“They’re dramatic,” he muttered.

“They’re human,” Tinsel said. “And, respectfully, so are you. Mostly.”

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Act IV – The Apology Delegation

By the next evening, Sequatchie Crossing had a plan.

Mabel Dean announced it in the Fellowship Hall as if it were a military operation:

“We will assemble an official delegation, approach Santa respectfully, and apologize like civilized people who occasionally behave uncivilized but know better.”

The delegation consisted of:

• Mabel Dean Ashcroft – Chief Negotiator, Emotional Strategist, Pecan Pie Engineer

• Reverend Peeler – Spiritual Advisor and Damage Control

• Trixie Jo Bartlett – Representative for All Children and Perpetually Disappointed Mothers

• Boot Barnes – Neutral Party Beloved by Everyone, Including Stray Dogs and Vending Machines

• Clovis Strickland – Required by Moral Law and Public Entertainment

They met at the courthouse just after dark. Snow flurries drifted down halfheartedly, like they’d heard the forecast didn’t have room in the budget for a proper storm.

The square glowed with multicolored Christmas lights, some flickering, some steady, some doing that aggressive strobe thing that gave Mabel a headache.

“Do we… just call him?” Boot asked, looking up at the sky.

“I already did,” Mabel said. “I left a voicemail with the North Pole switchboard. A very nice elf said they’d pass it along.”

“How’d you leave a voicemail?” Clovis asked. “You don’t have international calling.”

“I called the prayer chain,” Mabel replied. “It gets there.”

A faint jingling sound rose over the ridge, growing louder. Then the familiar silhouette of the sleigh appeared, cutting across the sky like a low-flying constellation with OSHA violations.

Snow swirled in thick, exaggerated patterns as the sleigh descended and landed with a soft whump.

Santa climbed out, slower this time, eyeing the delegation carefully.

“Well,” he said, “what is this?”

Mabel stepped forward, presenting the pie with both hands.

“This,” she said, “is an apology. Pecan, no walnuts, extra gooey, properly baked. And we are the people who came to deliver it.”

Reverend Peeler took off his hat. Trixie Jo adjusted her elf-themed scarf. Boot nodded, careful and respectful.

Clovis stared at his boots.

Santa eyed them, then the pie.

“Is this a bribe?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Trixie Jo said. “But morally justified.”

Mabel spoke.

“Santa… we messed up.”

Boot coughed. “One of us messed up more loudly than the rest of us.”

She continued. “Sequatchie Crossing is not always good with words. Or outsiders. Or unannounced flying objects. But we are good with trying again. And with feeding people until they understand we’re sorry.”

Reverend Peeler cleared his throat softly.

“Santa, on behalf of the church-which is not technically authorized to speak for the whole town but often does-we’d like to ask your forgiveness. Clovis doesn’t speak for us. He hardly speaks for himself.”

Santa looked at Clovis.

“Well?” he asked.

Clovis shifted, suddenly very aware of how small he looked next to someone whose HR file included “knows who you’ve been texting.”

He grudgingly stepped forward.

“Look,” he said, not meeting Santa’s eyes at first. “I… might’ve come across… harsher than intended.”

Santa folded his arms. “You told me to go back to where I came from.”

Clovis winced. “In my defense, I didn’t mean it like… that. I meant it like… ‘go back to your headquarters and fill out the right forms before you land heavy equipment on public land.’”

“Do I look like I fill out forms?” Santa demanded.

Trixie Jo muttered, “He looks like he delegates forms.”

Clovis finally looked up.

“I’m sorry,” he said, louder this time. “I shouldn’t’ve said it. Especially not to you. I get jumpy about people in uniforms and official-looking… stuff. We’ve had people from Nashville come in here ‘for the good of the town’ and leave us with bills and orange cones. You looked like another one.”

Santa’s expression softened slightly.

“You thought I was… what? A consultant?”

“A developer,” Clovis admitted. “Or worse, a grant writer.”

A murmur of sympathy rippled through the delegation. They’d all been burned at least once by someone “here to help.”

Santa exhaled.

“I’m not a developer,” he said. “If I was, there’d be condos on your ridge line and a traffic circle in front of the Dollar General.”

Boot blanched. “Lord, no.”

Mabel stepped in.

“We’re suspicious, Santa. But we’re not hateful. Sometimes we sound hateful when we’re scared, and we forget the difference. That’s on us. But the kids… they didn’t do anything wrong. They still think you only skip houses with bad dogs and people who don’t tip well.”

Santa chuckled despite himself. “That’s not… entirely accurate, but not entirely wrong either.”

Trixie Jo stepped forward, eyes bright.

“My kids wrote you letters,” she said. “They said if you’re thinking of skipping us, you should know they’ve been actually trying this year. And if you’re mad at grown-ups, they’ll start their own town if they have to.”

She handed him a small stack of envelopes. Santa took them, thumbed through the crayon handwriting, the stick figures of sleighs and scribbled apologies.

One stood out. A scrawled note from a little boy named Eli:

“Dear Santa,
I heard a grown-up was rude. We are not all like that. Please don’t give us up for adoption to Chattanooga.
Love, Eli”

Santa snorted laughter. The tension cracked like thin ice.

He looked at the delegation again, at Mabel’s hopeful face, Boot’s quiet sincerity, Trixie Jo’s thinly veiled desperation, Reverend Peeler’s steady eyes, and Clovis’s hunched shoulders.

Snowflakes drifted down, swirling around them, catching in the courthouse lights.

“Fine,” Santa said at last. “I will not skip Sequatchie Crossing.”

The square erupted. Reverend Peeler whispered, “Praise the Lord.” Trixie Jo wiped her eyes. Boot actually jumped, hat in hand. Mabel sighed in a way that sounded like every casserole finally cooling properly.

“However,” Santa added, raising a gloved finger, “I expect improved hospitality next time I drop by. No unsolicited commands about my origin. No treating me like a rogue drone. And absolutely no broom-pointing unless it’s to clear a landing strip.”

Mabel nodded firmly. “You have my word.”

Everyone turned to look at Clovis.

He swallowed. “I… I’ll put the broom away. Mostly.”

Santa smiled, slow and real.

“You have a strange town,” he said.

“We know,” Boot replied. “We’re working on it.”

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Act V – Conditions, Consequences, and a New Tradition

The crisis technically ended in the square that night, but in Sequatchie Crossing, nothing ends without at least three follow-up meetings and a new tradition being accidentally formed.

Two days later, Mabel hosted what she called the “Santa Hospitality Committee” in her kitchen.

The table was covered in:

• Pie crust scraps

• Hot chocolate mugs in varying states of stickiness

• A legal pad labeled “Santa Protocols – Draft 1”

Trixie Jo chewed on the end of a pen.

“Okay,” she said, “we need a plan so this never happens again.”

Boot nodded. “Agreed. We need written policy. Nothing says ‘we mean business’ like overreacting with structure.”

Mabel read from the list.

“Number one: If something lands from the sky in December and it has reindeer, no one speaks to it except designated personnel.”

“Who’s designated personnel?” Boot asked.

Mabel pointed at herself, the Reverend (in absentia), and Trixie Jo. “People who have basic social skills under pressure.”

“And me,” Clovis said. “In case it’s not Santa.”

Everyone stared.

“I’ll stand across the street,” he amended. “And just… watch.”

“Number two,” Mabel continued, “no one uses the phrase ‘go back where you came from’ for any reason within a 500-foot radius of the courthouse between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.”

“Make it all year,” Trixie Jo muttered. “If it’s good enough for Santa, it’s good enough for the rest of humanity.”

They wrote it down.

“Number three,” Mabel said, “we pre-bake ‘apology pies’ during Advent in case we need them.”

Boot frowned. “Won’t they get stale?”

Mabel smiled. “Boot Barnes, there are enough emergencies in this town to rotate stock regularly.”

Clovis sighed.

“You know,” he said, quieter now, “I didn’t mean to stir all this up. I really did think he might be… up to something.”

“Santa?” Boot asked.

“Anybody who comes down from the sky without a schedule,” Clovis replied. “We’ve been stomped on by people who said they were gonna ‘bring opportunity’ more times than I can count. Santa showed up like he owned the place. I reacted.”

Trixie Jo leaned back.

“That’s fair,” she said slowly. “But maybe next time, instead of yelling ‘go back,’ we try ‘who sent you and do you plan to ruin everything?’”

Clovis cracked the faintest smile.

“Maybe,” he said, “I’ll just ask for ID.”

Boot shook his head. “You’re gonna card Santa?”

“Better than telling him to leave,” Clovis muttered.

Mabel jotted something down on the list.

“Number four,” she said, “we remember that not every unexpected arrival is here to pave over the valley.”

“Some just want to land a sleigh,” Boot added.

“Some just want to check the chimneys,” Trixie Jo said.

Clovis sighed again. “Some need to be told where to park.”

They all laughed, the tension finally draining out of the room like heat from a cracked oven door.

The Santa Hospitality Protocol went up on the Fellowship Hall bulletin board the next Sunday. People skimmed it, nodded, and said things like “makes sense” and “about time.”

Most of them knew, even if they’d never say it out loud, that this wasn’t really about Santa. It was about learning, slowly and awkwardly, how to live in a town where history, suspicion, affection, and stubbornness were all piled together like mismatched ornaments in the same cardboard box.

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Act VI – Christmas Eve, on Probation No More

On Christmas Eve, the valley lay under a thin frosting of snow that looked prettier from far away than it did up close.

Inside homes:

• Kids tried to stay awake and failed around 10:17 p.m.

• Teenagers pretended not to believe and still checked the sky “just for the vibes.”

• Adults stacked presents, hid receipts, and muttered about batteries.

In the square, the nativity scene’s plastic baby Jesus glowed faintly like a low-lumen lightbulb. The inflatables-an off-brand snowman and a reindeer that looked like it had seen things-swayed gently in the cold breeze.

High above, Santa’s sleigh cut through the clouds.

Tinsel stood beside him, clipboard in hand.

“Next stop,” he announced, “Sequatchie Crossing. Status: formerly probationary, currently restored. Notes: ‘Watch for brooms.’”

Santa chuckled.

Below him, the valley sparkled in its own lopsided way. A trailer with a single string of lights drooping along the roofline. A farmhouse with candles in every window. A cabin whose porch glowed with nothing more than a single lantern but radiated warmth nonetheless.

“Nice place,” Tinsel said. “Kind of messy. But nice.”

Santa looked down and thought of:

• Mabel’s pie

• Trixie Jo’s kids with their shaky signs

• Boot’s quiet sincerity

• Reverend Peeler’s steady gaze

• Clovis’s awkward, stubborn apology

He thought of being told to go back where he came from, and then being asked-sincerely-to stay anyway.

He tugged the reins gently.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

The sleigh dipped lower, just enough for the bells to be heard faintly by anyone who still listened for them.

In one house, Eli jolted awake, convinced he’d heard something. He peered through the frosted window just in time to see a small streak of red move across the sky, barely visible against the swirl of stars.

“See?” he whispered to the dark. “He didn’t give up on us.”

Across town, Clovis stood on his porch, hands in his pockets, breath puffing in front of him. He scanned the sky, not like he was looking for intruders, but like he was, carefully and begrudgingly, checking to make sure Santa had found his way back.

He spotted the sleigh for a moment, barely more than a shadow against the constellations.

“All right then,” he murmured. “Guess we’re… okay.”

He stared for another second, then went back inside, where someone had hung a stocking with his name on it, lopsided and slightly too small, but there.

And in the North Pole ledger, under “Sequatchie Crossing – This Year”, Tinsel wrote:

Status: Still ridiculous, still redeemable.
Outcome: Santa will return.
Notes: Bring extra pies next time.

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Disclaimer

This story is a work of fiction set in the satirical world of Sequatchie Crossing. Any resemblance to real people, places, Christmas controversies, or local broom enthusiasts is coincidental, unintended, and probably Clovis’s fault anyway. No actual Santa visits were harmed in the making of this dispatch.

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