KELLS, Co. Meath. A letter to Santa from a Kells child has been answered early, briefly and from the wrong address, people familiar with the chimney said this week.
The letter was written in careful pencil at a kitchen table off the Market Square. It had one item on it. Not a bike, not a phone, not a dog. Just: "The Book of Kells, back in Kells please. It was made here. I will mind it."
"She asked what she should ask for, and I said whatever you want most," said a parent, a fictional composite who has had the same conversation every November for years. "I meant a scooter. She went and wrote down the Book."
The letter went up the chimney on the first Saturday of November. By Tuesday a crisp envelope had arrived in the post. It was not from the North Pole. It had a Dublin postmark.
Inside was a reply on thick cream paper, according to the family. It thanked the child for her "interest in our collection". It explained that the Book "cannot be wrapped". It enclosed a bookmark with a picture of the Book on it, and a leaflet about winter opening hours.
"Santa never sends a leaflet," said the parent. "That's how we knew."
Nobody in Kells can explain how the letter reached Dublin first. One theory, put forward by a fictional composite who drinks in the same pub every evening and has a theory on most things, is that anything addressed to the Book of Kells is automatically forwarded. "Since 1653, everything to do with that Book goes the one direction," he said. "Out the N3."
The child read the reply twice and then wrote back. Her second letter was shorter. "I don't want a bookmark. A bookmark is for keeping your place in a book. I want the book back in its place."
That line has since gone up in the window of a shop on John Street, in large letters, next to the Christmas lights.
A fictional composite elf, reached by phone at a busy time of year, confirmed that the original letter had now arrived at the North Pole, a little singed. "We get some big asks," the elf said. "Ponies. Peace on earth. One lad wanted Wi-Fi in the attic. But this is the first time someone has asked us to give a thing back to where it was made."
Asked if Santa could deliver, the elf paused. "We do chimneys. We do sleighs. We can get anything anywhere in one night. Kells is 69 km from Trinity. That's nothing. That's a reindeer warming up."
So what's stopping it?
"Paperwork from the other side," said the elf. "We've a naughty list and a nice list. There isn't really a list for 'kept something for three and a half centuries and gave out bookmarks'. We may have to make one."
Trinity has held the Book since the 1660s. It turned down requests to lend it in 2000 and again in 2011. The campaign in Kells is not asking for a loan at Christmas or at any other time. It is asking for the Book to come home.
The child has been told the Book will not be under the tree this year. She took it well.
"That's grand," she said, a fictional composite aged eight and a half, folding the bookmark neatly into the bin. "I'll ask again next year. And the year after. Kells is good at waiting. We're just better at asking."
The family's tree went up early this year, as it does in many houses in Kells. A space has been left underneath it. It is about the size of a Gospel book.