Lies, Damned Lies (Eve)

Call me Scrooge, call me a cynic and even a misanthrope. Sticks and stones….

I’m just telling it like it is: I hate Santa Claus, I hate his elves and most of all I hate those punk red-nosed deer.

If global warming means that the polar ice cap melts and forces Saint Nick (like the poor, innocent polar bears) to find a new home (Mars?), or better still to become extinct, then I say hallelujah. (The polar bears should not become extinct, however. I’m not saying that at all!)

It’s all so phony. A blatant lie, and adults are not supposed to be role models of lying, are they? It’s all just one huge porkie that starts being programmed from birth, maybe even prenatally, come to think of it, especially if people want to ascribe before-birth pressies to the Big Fat Dude.

Then, those littlies, raised on the prevaricating pabulum of “you better be good, for goodness sake….Santa Claus is coming to town” adapt to manipulation by their parents – instead of learning to have their own internal moral compass.

These same innocents may end up with years on the psychiatrist’s couch because of the terror of meeting Santa for the first time at a department store. And, worse being told to sit on the lap of this crusty, overweight, old and probably synthetically-bearded man. The very same who is the arbiter of whether the child has been bad or good.

Finally, when the parents decide that the fairy tale is meant to come to an end, they dump the news the whole Santa story was a fabrication. Why? God knows (well, the God thing might be trickery too). Something that was a bit of fun for a while for Mum and Dad. Now, they have to come clean, “Hey, Sonny or Girlie, the truth is that Mr. and Mrs. S., the elves, the toy factory, the reindeer, the cookies/milk/chimney caper, all of it, utter crap.”

So, can I tell you how delighted, how utterly ecstatic…well, okay…just happy I was when I opened my on-line Sydney Morning Herald link this morning and discovered that at this late date, just days before Christmas, Santa-land is shutting down.

I mean it’s utter garbage that a major newspaper would run a story about the fictional Man-in-the-Red-Suit, but any press that goes against the old guy has got to get a star rating in my good books.

The story read that because of the Santa factory’s terrible working conditions, one of the impoverished, underfed and overworked elves had sat down on the job. Threw an unselfish hissy-fit and refused to continue. Obviously this was some kind of last straw because, wonder of wonders, in a tremendous show of elfin solidarity, the whole toy assembly line came to a halt.

Imagine what an extraordinary Christmas this is going to be. Parents now will have to go out and buy their kids toys – probably made in China of all places - instead of having them delivered by Santa with his sleigh and team of deer slipping in under cover of night.

What horrible hardship! And what will they tell their kids. Another big whopper!