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A/N: Written for the 2010 Modmas "Re-inventing Santa Claus" Contest:

A very long time ago, so long ago that our Milky Way was yet an infant, there was a war. It took place on a world simply known as The Center – for it was the hub of all things cultural and technological. Everything worth anything came from The Center… until war destroyed it. The reason for this devastating war is long since lost. In fact, no one even remembers the war itself any more. It has passed into the realm beyond Myth: out of the collective memory. But one person remembers this war as if it happened a month ago, rather than billions of years: the legendary figure Santa Claus.

Santa Claus was born Xan Tacla Uslar in a small shack on a tiny little rock – barely able to support life – orbiting The Center some twenty years before the war. She (yes, Santa Claus was born female) was the oldest of ten children. Her mother died birthing her youngest brother when she was fifteen, and from then on she was the one keeping her family together. But nothing that she could think of was enough to keep her family from starving. Her eldest brother, two years her junior, died in a freak mining accident; her two youngest siblings died of malnutrition.

Desperate, Xan did the one thing that she had not yet tried: she disguised herself as a boy, lied about her age, and signed up to join The Center’s army. Certain corporations were getting too big – too corrupt, on The Center; and that meant a rebellion was on the way. So the high-ups were looking for grunts on the small worlds around their own – poor, needy, desperate people who were ignorant of their politics and would work for next to nothing. Promised more money than she could imagine, Xan was caught in The Center’s politics.

She, along with other desperately poor people, was shipped to a military base just outside The Center’s main trading town. There they were drilled long and hard, until… the war broke out, just as expected.

Many of the recruits from the slum worlds around The Center did not question their orders to destroy any rebels – they were too grateful to have full bellies and a clean place to sleep, even if they never saw any pay. But Xan had never forgotten her family, for night after night, she would have nightmares of them being consumed by fire. Or surviving the fire, only to die of starvation, just as her two youngest siblings had.

Her regiment was ordered to a world some distance away from her home world, and told to rain down fire upon it until it was nothing more than a charred rock, incapable of supporting even the tiniest life. And her regiment carried out its orders dutifully. But Xan’s nightmares got worse with each world they destroyed.

Unable to function to her commander’s satisfaction, Xan was sent back to The Center, where her nightmares got still worse. And then she got word that her home world had been the headquarters of the rebels, and had been wiped out of existence – not just turned into a lump of charcoal, but annihilated. Horrified to the point of sickness, Xan turned to The Center’s underworld. There she was able to have her memories wiped, her body transformed into a man’s, and steal a starship.

With the weapons on board her newly-acquired starship, Xan – now masquerading under the pseudonym “San ta’Claus” – set fire to The Center’s business core. With her revenge complete, Xan fled the galaxy that The Center resided it.

She traveled for thousands of years at the speed of light, trying to find a place where she could live in peace. Occasionally, she would find somewhere that seemed hospitable… but it was never completely right. Restless and unable to settle down, Xan traveled the universe for millions of years… until she came to Earth.

She didn’t really have a choice in the matter – her malfunctioning starship crashed into the Bering Sea in the fifth century. Unable to swim, she almost drowned. A small fishing boat rescued her, however, and the owners of the vessel – an elderly couple with no children – nursed her back to health. Their kindness was something that she had never experienced anywhere.

Once she got her strength back, she began helping the elderly man with his fishing – she had a strong body able to haul many more pounds of fish than his. She was determined to pay back this caring couple. But the elderly woman refused her offers to help around the house. Some months later, she died, leaving only a small wooden ball painted red-and-white, and the instructions, “Do good in the world, Santa Claus. Fill others’ hearts with joy, as you have mine.”

Xan took the old woman’s words to heart. She took her whittling – the fisherman had been teaching her – from their little shack and began traveling again. But this time, she had a purpose: spread joy to as many people as she could. She went to every village and town that she could, handing out her whittled ornaments.

And people began to wonder who this big, broad-shouldered man with the blue eyes and the warm laugh was. A total stranger, handing out presents without asking for anything in return?

One child got this mystifying answer: “I do not need to ask of you anything. You give to me what I most need, without my needing to ask.”

And then… the stranger vanished.

People talked about it, but no answer was forthcoming, and so they forgot… until Christmas. On that day, they received gifts in abundance, with a simple note: “From, Santa Claus. May your lives be filled with joy.”