He's the only elf at the North Pole with a university degree. From Oxford no less. He's a good fellow, but is definitely in an intellectual world of his own. It figures that Santa Claus has entrusted one of the most important jobs in the Village to Alabaster. Namely, Administrator of the Naughty or Nice List.
He has developed an ingenious system that updates the Naughty or Nice rating for every boy and girl four times a minute. That way, Santa Claus has the latest skinny on everyone and can adjust toy production accordingly.
Not only is Alabaster the only elf at the North Pole with a degree from Oxford, he's the only elf anywhere with a degree from Oxford. Actually, when he was a student there, he lived in the Oxford Dictionary at the Oxford University Library. (The Oxford Dictionary was the biggest book in the Library and he hollowed it out and made an apartment out of it.)
Alabaster is something of a statistician by trade, and one of the only elves in the world who gives a fig about numbers, columns and random bits and bytes of information. So when he received Shinny's call to come to the North Pole, he arrived with a resume that shut every other applicant out for the administrator's job. He quickly made himself right at home by moving into the nearest dictionary.
Alabaster wears his white hair parted down the middle and slicked with a bit of vegetable oil. His small head sits on his long, goose-like neck. (Picture a football sitting on a fence post and you've got the idea) He wears a dark (green) frocked coat, a dark (red) weskit (vest) and dark (green...and only on certain days, plaid green) knee pants with white stockings and buckled shoes. His entire appearance gives one the thought of a stork.
He takes his job very very seriously. Since most elves are not so serious natured, Alabaster created quite an uproar when he first arrived in the North Pole Village and immediately began taking inventory of the whole kit and kaboodle. It took over ten years to settle everyone and everything down. Elves just don't go in for keeping records and files on everything they do, think, say and stash away. But, it all came in pretty handy for future reference, and it was, afterall, Alabaster who came up with the idea of organizing all the toy requesting and giving and such.
In earlier times, Santa Claus simply took an estimate of how many children were out there expecting a visit, loaded up his sleigh with as much bounty as he figured he'd need and took off. Sometimes there were too many toys, sometimes there weren't enough. Of course, it took someone with the knack for numbers to come in and put this whole thing in proper order. And of course, it was Alabaster's bookkeeping experience that taught him to "check it twice."
Alabaster has a team of Naughty or Nice apprentice elves who help him keep track of the List. As you can imagine it is a colossal undertaking. Yet, as big as it is, Alabaster steadfastly sticks to his time-honored practice of writing the list out by hand with a quill pen. Several elves recently were caught making their entries with a computer.
Needless to say they are ex-apprentice's, having been banished to duty as sanitation engineers in the reindeer barn. Alabaster has put the computer to good use...as a doorstop. After a long day at the Naughty or Nice Archives, Alabaster likes to relax by archiving totally useless information. Some of his favorites are listed below.
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The average human will shed over 100 lbs. of hair by the age of 80 years.
The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
Well, we said Alabaster was quite a character. Seven out of ten elves agree. And so do we.
