O'Neill sighed and rolled his eyes as he wandered into the cafeteria and caught the full blast of the carol currently being belted out of the makeshift speaker system that had been set up. "Hey, guys. Can you do something about the volume control?" he asked a little plaintively, using a finger to try and massage some feeling back into his left eardrum.

A slightly shamefaced tech poked his head around the corner of the speaker. "Sorry, sir. Bit of a surge, then. This would be a lot easier if the General just let us tap into the base communications system."

O'Neill paled. "Don't even think of going there, soldier. It's bad enough that this entire base seems to have gone crazy over the last week or so."

The tech looked shocked. "But, sir! It's Christmas!"

O'Neill glanced around the cafeteria, that was gaily festooned in all kinds of decorations and thought back to the past couple of days with seemingly every man and woman on the base scurrying around, muttering under their breath and carrying all manner of bizarre things. Not to mention the catering staff engaging in some intricate negotiations with General Hammond over another extension of budget to cover 'sundries'. O'Neill had no idea what sundries were, and he didn't particularly want to find out.

"Christmas, huh? I hadn't noticed," he said dryly as he made for the food counter to see what he could scrounge. Glancing up and down, he made a face. "Meatloaf, cold cuts and salad," he muttered to himself. "Again. Lovely."

There was a small explosion from behind the counter and Chief Petrovski was there in all her plump, psychotic glory. "Take it or leave it," she snapped in her usual, inimitable way. "We're busy. Today is Christmas Eve, in case you hadn't noticed, and tomorrow we have to feed this base a Christmas dinner on the paltry budget that commanding officer of yours allows us. Even Carlucci has to agree with me on that, moronic chauvinist though he may be in other areas."

Recognising the danger signals, O'Neill smiled weakly, scooped up some cold cuts and salad, and then withdrew to a table on the opposite side of the room. In charge of the night and day shifts of the Catering Corps in StarGate Command respectively, Petrovski and Carlucci were always at odds, except when it came to the mutual bone of contention which was the Catering budget. They were unanimous as to their unequivocal denunciation of that.

Gazing morosely at his plate, O'Neill reflected that at least he only had two more days of purgatory to go before things started to return to normal. He hadn't always had a downer on Christmas, but ever since his son had died, it had been hard to buy into the whole Christmas message. It had gotten worse as the years had gone by. Thanksgiving was almost as bad, but this year he had been amused to watch Daniel trying to explain the concept of the holiday to Teal'c.

"-so the custom changed to just having a sprig of mistletoe hanging somewhere, although modern pagans still maintain the original traditions in some cases."

Speak of the Devil, and he walks in, spouting a lecture. O'Neill rolled his eyes as Daniel walked into the cafeteria, with an obviously bewildered Teal'c in tow. "Don't forget to tell him to have his stocking ready for tonight, Daniel," he called out mockingly.

Teal'c raised an expressive eyebrow. "Stocking?" he inquired of Jackson.

Daniel shot O'Neill an exasperated look. "Pay no attention to him, Teal'c," he growled. "He's just trying to make trouble."

O'Neill assumed a shocked expression and placed his hand over his heart. "Me? Cause trouble? Perish the thought. I just thought that, since you'd taken it upon yourself to introduce Teal'c to all that Christmas mumbo-jumbo, that you'd want to make a good job of it."

Jackson pushed his glasses back up and graduated to an exasperated glare. "Now why did I know, ahead of time, that you'd be the 'bah, humbug' type when it came to Christmas?"

"Humbug? I am aware of that term. However, I do not think that Colonel O'Neill bears any resemblance to a striped piece of candy."

O'Neill gave a snort of amusement. "Wrong kind of humbug, Teal'c. And don't give me any of that 'spirit of the season' crap, Daniel. This is still a military base, despite your best efforts, and-" He broke off as Sam Carter and Dr Frazier walked in, both women wearing a large strand of tinsel wrapped around their necks like a scarf. "Why do I even bother?" he moaned, tossing his hands into the air.

"Bother about what, sir?" Carter asked curiously.

"I was trying to remind Daniel and Teal'c that this is a serious, grown-up military base, when you two walked in looking like refugees from Santa's Grotto!" O'Neill said waspishly.

"It's only a little bit of tinsel," Frazier said soothingly.

"Little? I've seen smaller boa constrictors that could swallow a man!"

"Now that's just silly," Frazier sniffed. "Where on earth did you see a boa constrictor that size?"

"It wasn't on Earth," O'Neill shot back. "It was on PX49-53-4." He could see Carter's gaze become a little unfocused as she started to run through the co-ordinate catalogue and he hastily moved on before she realised that he had made the designation up. "And I'll bet General Hammond hasn't seen you in that get-up."

"Well, no, he hasn't," Frazier conceded reluctantly.

"Hah!" O'Neill rubbed his hands together in glee. "You wait until he does. Then you'll see-"

It wasn't his day for completing sentences, since Hammond chose that moment to walk into the cafeteria. O'Neill studied the red elf hat that was perched jauntily on the General's bald head and decided to leave while he still had a shred of dignity left. Loftily ignoring the muffled giggles of Frazier and Jackson, he swept out of the room with his head held high. The door hadn't quite closed behind him when he heard Carter's indignant yelp.

"Hey! PX49-53-4's a desert planet. It doesn't have boa constrictors!"

OOO

It was quiet in the control room. Too darn quiet.

No, that's not right, O'Neill thought to himself. This is the one sane place left on the base - if you ignore the nodding-head snowman on the main computer, the tinsel wrapped around the railings and the mistletoe some enterprising nutcase has hung on the Stargate itself.

It was the reason why he was here, as the clock edged its way towards midnight. The rest of the Base was resolutely locked into 'party mode', and the actual Gate Control was the only place Jack could be certain that there would be no 'ho ho ho-ing' going on. He had come in and flung himself into a convenient chair, putting his feet up on a console, ignoring the scandalised look from Ortiz, and dug out the latest Star Trek novelisation. This one was several shades better than some of the ones he had been reading lately, and he had managed to get up to Chapter Five without hurling the book across a room. And there was a scantily-clad star babe, unaccountably blind to the charms of Captain Kirk, to spice things up.

How come there's hardly ever any scantily-clad star babes in any of my adventures? Jack mused. Well, apart from the scantily-clad star babes with icky space snakes inside them. They don't count.

The familiar sound of the Stargate activating suddenly distracted him in nothing flat and he looked up. Ortiz had lifted his hands from the computer and was frantically shaking his head.

"I know, I know," O'Neill said, forestalling the inevitable. "You didn't do anything."

"Well, I didn't," Ortiz said, looking like he was torn between losing his temper and bursting into tears. "This is unfair. It's Christmas!"

Totally thrown for a moment, O'Neill stared at him. "What's that got to do with it?" he demanded.

Then the room was filled with personnel as everything responded to the alarm. O'Neill knew a quiet satisfaction that there had only been a few seconds difference in the response time. Carter tore her paper hat off her head as she ran expert eyes over the flashing red lights on the main console. After a while, she frowned.

"That's odd."

"Aw, Carter, you know I hate it when you say that," O'Neill groaned. "Especially when you say it in those doom-laden, this-is-bad tones."

"What's odd, Sam?" Daniel asked hastily.

Carter was gazing down at the control console, the frown on her face deepening. "This isn't an off world activation."

"What? But it has to be!" Daniel yelped.

Even without turning around, O'Neill knew that Ortiz would be on his second breakdown. Some small flicker of Christmas spirit made him speak up: "Nothing happened on this end to start the gate up. It has to be an off world activation."

Sam wasn't having any of it, though, and she shook her head. "No, this is definitely not coming from off world, but it isn't from here, either."

"Oh, great!" O'Neill exploded. "I knew we were going to have something wrong when we installed the Antarctica gate instead of our other one. Now we know why this was at the bottom of the world: it was busted!"

"We ran exhaustive tests-" Carter began.

"And we've got the proof they don't mean diddly-squat happening right in front of us!" Jack interrupted ruthlessly. "Where's it dialling out to? Anubis? Hathor? The Death Star?"

The last got him a small double-take from Ortiz but Carter was used to him and ignored him. The gate had dialled up all six symbols, now, but the look on her face was one of consternation. "It's dialled the co-ordinates for Earth!"

O'Neill wasn't the only one who blinked. "What's the use in that?" Daniel wondered. "There's no point in opening a gateway to where you already are, surely?"

"What he said," O'Neill said, looking wise.

Any explanation Carter might have had was lost by the rumbling of the Gate continuing to dial. "Seventh co-ordinate!" Ortiz yelped in excitement.

Jack couldn't hold down a nervous twitch. The phrase 'seventh co-ordinate' tended to make him want to come out in a rash. He had nothing against the Asgard. For dwarfish, grey-skinned, big-eyed super aliens, they were a cool crowd, but whenever he was around Thor, he always got the impression that the tiny being was fighting a deep compulsion to pat O'Neill on the head whenever he got something right. It was a deeply unsettling feeling. But it was obvious that the Gate was cycling in another symbol.

"We don't have the power to generate an intergalactic jump, do we?" he asked worriedly.

"No," Carter agreed. "The Gate will try, but without the necessary power, it will shut down. What I can't understand is how there can be somewhere in the Asgard galaxy that has exactly the same co-ordinates as Earth."

The Gate went through the lockdown process. Unfortunately, the Control computer didn't have the necessary configuration to reveal what that seventh symbol was. Everyone braced themselves for the inevitable chaos that would result when the Gate tried to engage and found itself lacking the necessary power. If they had had a little more warning, they would have shut down the entire system, but doing it now would cause problems when they went to reboot it.

The rumble rose again, like an aural wave, and the Gate started to revolve. Confusion reigned, over which Hammond's voice rose, sharp with fear. "Shut it down! Shut the whole damn system down!"

"I'm trying!" Ortiz shot back, frantically tapping out command after command. "Major, I'm locked out!"

"Let me try." Still sounding calm, despite the situation, Sam took the Sergeant's place as he obediently scooted to one side. After a couple of seconds, she shook her head and shot O'Neill and the General a despairing look. "Ortiz is right; we're locked out of the system."

"So what happens now?" Jack demanded.

"I haven't the faintest idea," Carter admitted, looking out through the observation window as the eighth symbol slammed into place.

The Gate activated. Everyone had tensed against a pyrotechnic display as the Base's systems were overloaded and shorted out, but that failed to happen. Instead of the usual quantum foam spume they were used to seeing, however, a glittering fountain of spun glass and jewelled stars flared out, spiralling and twisting around itself before collapsing back, creating a jet black mirror across which ran quicksilver ripples. They had a couple of seconds to stare in wide-eyed bemusement before the obsidian wall was broken.

Jaws hit the floor in a perfectly co-ordinated crash as they all witnessed the eight reindeer came into view, a pair at a time. The leaders were snow-white, with jet black antlers, the second pair the colour of clotted cream, with honey antlers. After that came a pair that was the colour of toffee, their crowning glory matching the hue of fresh horse chestnuts, The final pair were black, and their antlers looked like they had been carved from silver oak. All eight wore harness of red leather, embellished with gold, the sound of the bells audible even through the bullet-proof glass of the windows.

There was a sleigh, of course. It was made of wood, carved and polished with loving care, glowing in the hard lights of the Gate Room. High-backed, to accommodate the immense sack that took up most of the space, it had low sides that rose again to become the driver's seat. The runners seemed to be made out of some kind of metal that glowed with an inner light if its own, leaving a phosphorescent trail as the sleigh levitated out of the Gate and started to fly around in a tight circle within the Gate Room. The driver obviously hadn't expected to find himself in such a confined space and hauled back on the reins with a whoop and a holler in some foreign tongue.

Some of the details from the story were incorrect. For a start, he wasn't fat, just sturdy. They could see his arm muscles bulge as he fought to contain the eight reindeer as they threatened to shy and become disorganised as they reacted to the unfamiliar surroundings. His outfit wasn't red, either. It was green, although the fur that lined it was still white. His hood had fallen back and his hair was the required snow white, while the magnificent beard would have any store Santa sobbing with uncontrolled envy. He glanced into the Observation Room as the reindeer took him past, and his eyes were bright with amusement and a vivid green.

He had the reindeer back under control, now, and they were describing a wide arc around the perimeter of the Gate Room. The Marines who had dashed inside, their guns at the ready, had skidded to a halt and were gawping along with everyone else. As the sleigh came around the final turn, the Gate sprang into life. Even though it hadn't shut down, the outer ring started to spin, all of the chevrons blazing a bright golden light. The quicksilver ripples became opalescent and began to turn in a spiral.

The sleigh turned into the Gate. The driver released the reins and gave a musical bellow that seemed to galvanise the reindeer. They surged forward. Just as the leading pair reached the Gate, reindeer and sleigh became a blaze of light which exploded into a hundred different streaks of light that hit the swirling portal. And then they were gone, the Gate was slowing down and the computers came back on line with a blasé chirp and started to do a routine system sweep.

It took the Humans a little longer to recover. When they managed to get their jaws back up off the ground, they all found it a little difficult to look at anyone else, or to ask the obvious question. After all, what if you asked the person next to you if he or she had just seen Father Christmas and he or she said 'no'? Or worse still, if they said 'yes'? Where did that leave you? (Apart from hoping like hell that you weren't on the list that contributed to the increase in fossil fuels on the planet.) Characteristically, it was Daniel Jackson who recovered first.

"Well, that solves that mystery," he said in satisfaction, taking off his glasses and polishing them happily.

"What, the one about whether or not there's a Father Christmas?" O'Neill said sarcastically. He knew he was dead in the water, but he had never been one to back down from a fight, no matter how hopeless.

Jackson gave him a pitying look as he shoved his glasses back on. "Jack, everyone with a half a brain has always known that Father Christmas exists," he said in withering scorn. "The real puzzle has always been how he manages to visit every boy and girl on Earth in one night. Now we know." He clapped his hands together and looked around. "Okay, who's going back to the party?"

O'Neill watched in high indignation as all of the others enthusiastically endorsed the idea and started to leave. Even Carter left the computer, albeit with a slightly wistful look, and pretty soon Jack found himself alone again apart from a dazed-looking Ortiz.

"Not a word," he ordered the sergeant, who promptly nodded, then shook his head before giving up and going back to his console.

O'Neill went to stand in front of the window and stare out at the Gate, which was now reassuringly inert. It had probably looked like that all the time it had been locked in the eternal snow of Antarctica, apart from one night in the year, when it stirred into life and dialled an address that included every home where a boy or girl who believed was lying in their bed. Every year for how many years? A thousand? Two? Further back still? Jack sighed. He was giving himself a headache.

"It's probably some Go'auld trick," he groused to himself as he gave up and decided to have an early night. He'd have to put up with the others being insufferably Christmassy in the morning, so he might as well get some sleep.

And he would have got it, as well, if it hadn't have been for the three hundredweight of coal on his bunk when he got there.....