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So here’s the thing.
LeFou Deux, or Lee as he very much preferred, didn’t believe in Santa Claus.
You heard that right: He didn’t believe in Jolly Saint Nick despite the fact he dressed up as him every Christmas Eve and snuck into other people’s houses to leave gifts for all the boys and girls of the isle (even the kids older than him) except himself with the help of a few friends.
He didn’t believe in the magical man who visited every house in the world and left gifts for all the good boys and girls in one night and he didn’t believe he had a wife named Mrs. Claus who he lived with at the North Pole 365 days of the year with all their little elf and yeti children, and reindeer pets and snowman friends.
He didn’t believe the man had a naughty and nice list he checked twice or that he was always watching.
He didn’t believe in toy making elves and yetis that couldn’t talk in any human language despite having his friends dress up as them when helping him on his yearly mission to hand out the gifts he made.
He didn’t believe in Reindeer despite dressing up the friendliest of Gaston’s rabid dogs (Actaeon) as Rudolph every year in case any little kid was up and saw them.
He didn’t believe in the Isle of Misfit toys or that Santa had friends named Jack Frost, the Easter Bunny, Sandman, and the Tooth Fairy or any of the other stories told about them except for the Story of Pitch Black.
And he certainly didn’t believe that Santa Claus was eating all those cookies and drinking all that milk in one night without taking any bathroom breaks or that he was reading every letter written to him.
Even at nine years old, when Lee had first set out on this journey of his, he hadn’t believed any of it and neither had his friends (well, except for the Krampus and other monster bits). Despite how much the lot of them pretended to.
If anyone were to find out this information, it would probably destroy the little lie he and his friends had built up for the past ten years. But it was the honest to gods truth.
LeFou Deux, Claudine Frollo, Lil Yaz Sorcerer of Enchancia, Big Murph, Sammy Smee, Marya (or Maria, as she sometimes spelled it whenever she felt like switching things up) Rasptuin, and Quinlynn Hearts didn’t believe in Santa Claus or any of the stories surrounding him except for Krampus and Pitch Black, who were on the isle. And there was a very simple reason for that—Santa Claus had never ever visited any of the kids on the isle. Which, sure, could be attributed to the fact that several of the kids were or would be considered naughty by Auradon standards—but that certainly didn’t account for kids like little Dizzy Tremaine and Gigi Gothel or the Smee Twins, all of whom had never done anything truly wrong in their lives that would warrant such a punishment as being ignored by a man who was supposed to love the children of the world.
So no, they didn’t believe in any of that. LeFou Deux least of all. And if, by some off chance, Santa Claus was real then he must not have been all that great because he’d never done anything for even the gentlest of Isle kids. In which case, none of them wanted anything to do with him. Because who would do something so cruel? Giving every other child in the world presents while excluding a whole island of children who’d never asked to be born?
Santa Claus wasn’t real.
LeFou Deux and his friends knew that.
But they still kept up the ruse he existed along with every story regarding him and went around pretending to be him/the elves regardless.
Why?
Well, for the children of the isle of course. Because after all the shit they deal with on a day-to-day-to-day basis they deserved something good and nice that they didn’t have to work for and most of their parents weren’t gonna do that for them. So Lee and his ‘elves’ did.
Painstakingly making a list of isle children every year (adding and subtracting from previous years list), finding out what the children (even the ones older than them) liked, and either making them a single gift based on that from scratch or digging for something that they’d like and dropping the newly wrapped gifts off at every house with no expectation of recognition or reception. Setting up a little mailbox that only the isle kids knew about for the older kids and dropping off clothes, diapers, and other things a parent might need for the ones too young to have full blown personalities.
Doing their hardest to fulfill the wishes and crying over the ones they couldn’t.
‘Dear Santa,
Can you giv me my bruther bak pleas?’
‘Dear Santa,
Can you make my momy and dady luv me?’
‘Dear Santa,
Can you fix my leg so I can protect my family from my dad?’
‘Dear Santa,
Can you bing my fishy back?
I miss him ):’
‘Dear Santa,
Can you make me normal so I can have friends?’
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All for the excited chatter, hope filled eyes, and wide smiles that would fill the snow and hail filled streets and halls in the week after Christmas morning when the isle kids thought no one was looking.
All so that the other isle kids could have something good to believe in (even if they themselves didn’t).
Doing it every year since they started—even on the ones where nothing felt okay and they wanted to do anything but spread holiday cheer for a holiday that was based on a stupid lie (like when Lil Yaz died and Zevon and CJ proceeded to commit treason for the lols which Uma’s crew would proceed to do to copy less than a year later). Even when they felt helpless and wanted to curl up under their covers and disappear.
Becoming the Isle’s Santa Claus and Elves, all for the Island of Misfit kids who would never know or appreciate them for it (because Auradon certainly wouldn’t do it)—becoming the beacon of hope that they all desperately wanted but never got.
Hoping that no one would find out about their little white lie that Lil Yaz had been so proud to be a part of even until his dying breath (hoping that their friend’s memory wouldn’t be besmirched by the harmless little ‘scam’ that he’d taken so much joy in when he was alive) and that in the future, the gifts they’d left would at least be fondly remembered by the people who had needed them the most.
Like:
Dizzy Tremaine, who they’d given a mannequin head to.
Gigi Gothel, who they’d given a book about how to do hair.
Claudine Frollo, who they’d given a little lockable box with a key (that they had to make) attached.
Like:
Nosey Stabbington, who they gifted a book about his dad and uncle who he looked up to so much.
The little pirate girl in Uma’s crew, who they gifted a doll.
And the Smee Twins, who they’d fitted frame glasses with the right prescription. Along with so many others who they barely knew but wanted nothing but the best for, despite any past , present, or future grievances between them all.
Because they were also abandoned children on the Island of Misfit Kids—discarded and forgotten by Auradon and the world around them like an unwanted or broken toy that many AKs took for granted. Abandoned on the Isle of the Lost. Surviving on the Heroes’ scraps through no fault of their own, for mistakes that weren’t theirs made years before any of them were even born and taking care of themselves and the few loved ones they all had.
(Even if it was possible it would all be hopeless in the end).