First published in 1904, "
A Kidnapped Santa Claus
" by L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wizard of Oz, describes the action of some uncommon events in the land of Santa. Not far from the Laughing Valley where Santa and all his magical helpers live, and beyond the Forest of Burzee, there stands a huge mountain that contains the Cave of Demons. Each demon has a specialty: Selfishness, Envy, Hatred, Malice, and Repentance. Because the promise of Santa puts all girls and boys on their best behavior, the demons have hardly any visitors to their caves. In order to remedy their dismal foot traffic, they conspire to kidnap Santa! But oh! even when it looks as if the demons might win, one can never underestimate the power of devoted (and magical!) friends.
Adapted by Alex Robinson, author of several graphic novels, the action and menace of the tale will be enhanced and lightly spoofed. It seems a most appropriate treatment of Baum's work -- he was an author who often let his profound and unsettling meanings roil beneath the surface of his otherwise fanciful stories."A Kidnapped Santa Claus" is a Christmas-themed short story written by L. Frank Baum, famous as the creator of the Land of Oz it has been called "one of Baum's most beautiful stories" and constitutes an influential contribution to the mythology of Christmas."A Kidnapped Santa Claus" was first published in the December 1904 edition of The Delineator, the women's magazine that would print Baum's Animal Fairy Tales in the following year.
The magazine text was "admirably illustrated" with "pen drawings of marked originality"by Frederick Richardson, who would illustrate Baum's Queen Zixi of Ix in 1905."A Kidnapped Santa Claus" was published two years after Baum's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902), and shares its mythological cosmos: in the story as in the novel, Santa lives in the Laughing Valley on the border of the Forest of Burzee, and is assisted by knooks, ryls, fairies, and pixies. In modern editions the two works, novel and story, are sometimes published together.Though the short story has strong similarities with the novel, it has been interpreted as presenting "a less rosy view" of the world, in that it shows elements of evil as fundamental to existence and ineradicable.