"Can I come along and watch them do it?" I ask.

"Of course," Jeff says.

"Jeff," I say. "I hear some of last year's elves were caught plotting a ma.s.s murder."

For a second Jeff freezes, Christmas decorations in hand. Then he recovers and carries on pinning them up.

"It was going to be on a Monday," he says.

"How was it thwarted?" I ask.

"One of the kids-the one who was going to be bringing the weapons in-didn't show up that day," Jeff says, "and so they postponed the plan. And while they were discussing the postponement, the plan was overheard, and the police intervened."

"And what was the plan?" I ask.

"They were going to bring some knives and guns in," he says, "and they were going to kill students and teachers. They were going to disrupt the telephone system. They knew where the telephone controls were. And they were also going to disable the electricity. Turn off the lights. And carry out their plans. And these were well-thought-out plans. They had diagrams. They had a list... ."

"How many people were on the list?" I ask.

"Dozens," says Jeff. "And each kid was a.s.signed who was going to do who. With what."

"Oh my G.o.d," I say.

Jeff shrugs. Then he smiles. "These boys had just turned thirteen years old," he says. "They were going to disable the telephone system. That sounds terrifying, right? Well ..."

Jeff rummages around in his pocket and pulls out his mobile phone. He gives me a look as if to say, "Well, duh!"

"So maybe they once saw someone in a James Bond movie disable a building's communications system," he says.

The more Jeff tells me about the ins and outs of the plot, the more it strikes me as a mix of very chilling and very stupid. After the shooting, the boys were going to run to the station and catch a train to Anchorage, where they'd create new lives for themselves using aliases. One boy's alias was going to be John Wayne.

The thing is, they hadn't checked the train timetables. The shootings were going to occur at lunchtime in the cafeteria. Even if they gave themselves an hour to kill their enemies and get to the station, they would still have had a five-hour wait on the platform for the Anchorage train.

Lunchtime is over, and Jeff's sixth graders run into cla.s.s. They are only twelve, just a few months younger than the plotters.

"To see those little boys in handcuffs ..." Jeff says. "I taught five of them. It broke my heart. As teachers we had to carry on like it was a normal day. But we were being ravaged inside with our emotions. Some teachers were having anxiety attacks. One is still suffering badly with stress... ."

I'm not allowed by law to meet the kids, but I'm determined to meet at least one of their parents this week. I ask Jeff if he'll try and arrange this. He promises he will. I tell him I'll see him tomorrow afternoon for the cla.s.s where the kids get to open the letters to Santa for the first time.

WEDNESDAY MORNING. Doug Isaacson-the new mayor of North Pole-stands atop a snowy nature trail and surveys his town below.

"Imagine being in England two thousand years ago when your towns were just getting started," Doug says. "How would you set them up for future generations? That's where we are! We can do that here! That's awesome."

"How old is North Pole?" I ask.

"Fifty years old," says Doug.

"You're a founding father," I say.

"Very much so," says Doug. "And we'll be forgotten to history in time. But not the things we start. Not the things we set up properly. They'll last a lot longer."

This is Doug's first week in office. He says he was elected on a Christmas mandate. His campaign centered on the proposition that whilst North Pole is very Christma.s.sy, there is room for it to be even more Christma.s.sy. Recently, Doug went on a fact-finding visit to the small Washington town of Leavenworth, where everything is Bavarian-themed. Many shopkeepers there wear lederhosen and sell bratwurst.

As a result, Doug has had an idea. It is an idea he recognizes will be a hard sell to the people of this freedom-loving wilderness town. But the idea is this: Doug would like every shopkeeper in North Pole to wear an elf costume.

"Many people move to Alaska because they don't want to be fenced in," I say. "So if you say, 'I'm going to fence you in with elf costumes,' might that be an issue?"

"Absolutely," says Doug. "But let me show you something."

We climb into Doug's pickup truck. He drives me around town.

"Some people," Doug says, "think North Pole looks like a truck stop. And that's unconscionable."

We drive past the extremely festive Dalman's Family Restaurant, but then past the utterly non-Christma.s.sy computer shopc.u.mvideo game arcade, where I see teenagers playing violent shooting games. We stop and enter. Half a dozen teenage boys are shooting the h.e.l.l out of the SAS (the British army's Special Forces). British soldiers' heads are exploding. Blood sprays from their backs as they lie convulsing in the desert dirt.

Doug walks purposefully past the boys and toward the owner. He produces an elf costume from his bag. Doug doesn't have to say anything. The owner instinctively knows where this is heading.

"No," he says.

"Will you at least try the hat on?" Doug asks.

"No," he says.

Doug tries to appeal to him entrepreneur to entrepreneur. Apparently North Pole has recently lost a big Alaska Airlines promotion. For the past two years, the airline flew tourists into North Pole and took them dogsledding, Christmas-ornament making, and so on. But this year, Alaska Airlines has decided that North Pole just doesn't look Christma.s.sy enough.

"If we want to capture that Christma.s.sy tourist," Doug says unapologetically, "then, yeah, for at least six weeks out of the year, people ought to wear elf suits."

The computer-shop owner says he'll think about it.

I drift away and get talking to one of the teenage boys. He's spraying an SAS officer up the back with a machine gun.

"Do you ever get an overdose of Christmas, living here?" I ask him.

"Pretty much all summer," he says.

"What do you do to redress the balance?" I ask.

"I come here and shoot people all day," he shrugs.

"Doug," I say as we leave the computer shop, "do you think that if the town had been more Christma.s.sy back in April, those kids at the middle school wouldn't have wanted to plot their Columbine-style ma.s.sacre?"

"Let's just say that if the spirit of Christmas were permeating the entire soul of this community, no child would be feeling that despondent," Doug replies. "What is the spirit of Christmas? Isn't it peace on earth? Good will to men?"

WEDNESDAY LUNCHTIME. I call Jessie Desmond, my North Pole Mys.p.a.ce friend who hates Christmas.