Bells Will Be Ringing, Doors Will Be Cycling: Making Sure Santa and His Reindeer Don't Spend Christmas Eve Idling

It's December 22, and Santa and his team of elves and reindeer are gearing up for Christmas Eve. The lists have been checked (twice!), the sleigh decorated and inspected, and the toys passed under the eyes of the head elf for quality control. The reindeer have upped their training to fly as quickly as possible across the night skies, delivering presents almost faster than Amazon.

There is a quiet, practiced hubbub all throughout the North Pole. Presents are being sorted alphabetically by country. The reindeer have all been to the vet for health and speed checkups. The elves have prepped the meals and snacks the team will need to pull Christmas off this year under Mrs. Claus’s guidance. There’s just one issue that threatens to bring all this expert preparation to a screeching, free falling halt: the faulty rolling doors at Santa’s workshop.

Don’t laugh—it’s true! While Santa and his elves have changed with the times over the past hundreds of years (for example, the nice and naughty lists are on Google docs for quick, last-minute editing), one thing has remained an unfortunate constant: the broken, inoperable rolling doors.

Dented, Dingy Doors at the North Pole

Just like Santa, you may be thinking “How much can a faulty rolling door really affect the North Pole’s productivity? They have this down pat!”

This is true, Mr. and Mrs. Claus have preparing for Christmas Eve with their team of elves and reindeer on lock. But what they don’t have are doors that glide open and closed as effortlessly as scissors sliding across a fresh roll of wrapping paper.

The doors have been an issue for a while. Elves have had to create different paths during their work day to maneuver around whatever hundred or so (at least!) out of the 300 rolling doors that aren’t functioning well. Not to mention how cold it gets in certain parts of the workshop – Santa also didn’t choose insulated commercial garage doors all those years ago. This is all a major problem for the North Pole team as Christmas is quickly approaching. They aren’t sure if they’ll be able to get everyone’s presents on the sleigh in time for Santa and the reindeer on Christmas Eve, and all the shivering during the brainstorming meetings has left them exhausted. What can they do?

Dory and Rolland, two tenured elves, might have a solution. But they have to convince Santa soon!

Insulated, High Performance Rolling Doors to the Rescue

The pair have been strategizing and researching for months. The troubles at the North Pole can be solved by unlikely heroes: insulated, high performance rolling doors. They learned the traditional commercial rolling garage doors previously installed years ago were no match for the amount of cycles the doors go through in a day, along with the arctic wind and weather at the North Pole. The team is losing steam, heat, and positivity, three things needed to get those presents stacked on Santa’s sleigh and Santa ready for Christmas Eve.

Dory and Rolland call an emergency meeting with Santa and explain their solution: high-performance roll up doors with energy efficient garage door insulation. If Santa goes along with this plan, the elves will also have to make sure he understands the amount of air leakage the doors have at the North Pole.

Even the top-of-the-line thermally insulated doors can falter if they aren’t sealed, so making sure Santa considers not only insulated, high performance doors but also door perimeter seals is crucial. As Dory and Rolland explained, door perimeter seals can drastically improve the North Pole’s energy efficiency (keeping heat in, making the elves happier and warmer) by decreasing air infiltration by 94%. As a leader in green technology in the human and magic worlds, Santa and the head of his reindeer-drive aerospace division were pleased the new doors also complied with the latest IECC and ASHRAE air leakage standards. Santa’s eyes widened. That would make a huge difference quickly for the elves in their workshop!

Additional High Performance Door Benefits for a Holly, Jolly Christmas

Not only will the high performance doors eliminate the need for the elves’ convoluted path of travel workarounds, but they will also allow Santa to dissolve the DREAM (Door Repair Elves and Additional Maintenance) team at the North Pole. While this may sound like a negative, for all the elves, it’s a positive.

Nobody wanted to be assigned to the DREAM team because their duties were solely focused on replacing springs and repairing or arranging for maintenance for the faulty rolling doors. Now the elves can be back on toy manufacturing, packaging, and gift personalization teams – the ones they were born to be on.

High performance rolling doors are springless and manufactured for more than 300,000 cycles, with some able to reach 500,000 or even 1,000,000 cycles without any major maintenance, as Dory and Rolland learned. When they relayed this to Santa, he knew what doors would be best for the North Pole, and decided to go with the best of the best. The fate of Christmas was at stake, after all.

An added benefit that was surprising to Santa (quite a feat!) was the high performance rolling doors can assist with LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building certifications. While Santa doesn’t buy in to many human-created acronyms and organizations, the mission of LEED, which provides a framework for healthy, highly efficient, and cost-saving green buildings and helps the environment is one he backs whole-heartedly. It also solidifies the workshop at the North Pole’s commitment to the environment and future generations – a wonderful benefit that really put the bow on top of this proposal.

Dory and Rolland could see the spark of excitement return to Santa’s eyes during their meeting. They knew it was coming as Santa said with a hearty chuckle, “Let’s do this! And quickly!”

Dory called the closest door dealer to the North Pole to see if they could make it work under such a tight timeframe. They could! A Christmas miracle. Rolland thinks the company borrowed some of the elves’ magic to make it happen during their initial meeting, but can keep a secret.

The 300 faulty rolling doors have been replaced by high performance, insulated commercial ones. Faint sounds of Christmas music can be heard from the elves’ workshop, something that hasn’t been so merry and bright for quite some time. Mountain after mountain of presents for kids all across the globe are piling up outside of the quickly cycling rolling doors. The elves are giggling. Mrs. Claus is back to one of her favorite activities: creating the perfect cup of hot chocolate for Santa’s journey. She may even try one of those new hot chocolate bombs she saw on her friend’s cellphone.

Santa and the reindeer are ready and raring to go for Christmas Eve. Crazy how much of a difference a few high performance rolling doors can make, huh?

Wishing you a happy and healthy holiday season from all of us at Cornell! 

Cornell is the industry leader for rolling door, security grille and closure product experts since 1828. To inquire how Cornell's long history of innovation and customer service can help you with your next rolling door project, call 1-877.640.8825!