Santa Inc.

I wrote this post in response to something Ellis posted on facebook about how I know the truth about Santa the other day. Where he got that idea, I don't know. But I decided to play along, it was just going to be a reply to what he wrote on his wall but it started getting long so I decided to just make it a formal blog post instead. You may be interested to know that what I wrote was based on various Santa Claus myths, I simply told to story as it would have been had Santa been a heartless CEO/Nazi. The articles I used in my research are cited below in case you are interested.        Alright Ellis, you want me to elucidate the Santa Claus problem and although I hate to talk about this in a public forum were kids might see it, I will acquiesce because I think the people should know the truth behind the lies. If there are children in the room, it would probably be best to send them out.        The sad truth is this, Santa is real (1). Not the answer you were expecting right? You see, he is indeed real but he is also one of the greatest white collar criminals to ever live. I'll list a few of his larger misdeeds here but know that there are many more. Santa started off with pure enough intentions, around 600 years ago he started a non profit group to help underprivileged children who's parents couldn't afford toys find a little joy. He set out to brighten the world with trinkets and carved little wooden horses one child at a time. Back in those days, it was a family business, mostly involving the children that lived in and around the area where said fat man lived, it was far from a global affair yet.        Slowly, Santa began expanding his organization and it became difficult for him to make all of the toys himself, even though he worked to build the toys all year. A little known fact is that at this time, Santa came up with the idea of offering up to others the chance to volunteer in his shop so that he could increase production.  Now I know it seems harmless enough that he offered up the chance to render service to the poor to the community at large but he set a serious precedent, he focused the majority of his recruiting efforts on children. In his mind, if the toys were for the kids, then the kids should be helping to make them.  As a trade off for helping produce the toys, Santa promised to deliver toys to all the children, not just the underprivileged ones as he had in the past (7). His increased production allowed him to begin expanding his enterprise to other countries and in gratitude, many began making conciderable donations to his charity. As it turns out, these donations far exceeded operational costs and Santa started making a nice profit for himself.        It is at this time that he developed his characteristic large girth and also marks the point that the organization as a whole stopped being a charity and instead effectively became a business. At first this system worked well but Mr. Claus soon learned that children are easily distracted and he quickly faced the problem of a dwindling volunteer staff. It is at this point that Santa's criminal record can truly be said to begin. Santa opened an orphanage and forced the children he took in to build toys, at the time this was a generally accepted practice in much of europe. However, during the 19th century many european countries began passing laws that prohibited child labor (2), so Santa did what any reasonable CEO would do, he moved his business to the north pole where such laws did not exist.        Of course, because of the nature of his business, it has always been in Santa's best interest to maintain the good will of the world citizens so in secret he went to great lengths and committed countless egregious atrocities in order  to create people that were genetically different enough from us that they can no longer be called homo sapiens, but are instead, as Mr. Claus calls them, "elves". This was done so that he could bypass any potential lawsuits that might be levied by the governments of the world or the ICC (3) for mistreating workers. These "elves" were bred to be short with high metabolisms so that they would be too small to mount an effective rebellion against their master and also be highly energetic so that they could be forced to work for longer hours, the pointy ears was actually something of an accident, it was an unintended genetic mutation but because of the way focus groups seemed to take to them, he kept the change, even though he always considered them to be misshapen and unsightly.        What followed next was a vicious re-branding campaign that got underway in the 1860s (8), as Santa began to push his protrail of an idilic village in a snowy, remote part of the north pole and the elves as happy workaholics that made toys for free and were happy to do so. As world population began to explode, Santa began searching for a way to keep his company in the black while still delivering gifts to the children of the world. This desire to continue to deliver gifts shouldn't be interpreted as some remaining shred of humanity in Mr. Claus but was in actuality a desire to maintain the wealthy lifestyle to which he had become accustom, and his love of the fame granted him as an international celebrity. My research also discovered that Santa has citizenship and residence in several countries including; Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and even Canada (4). He also maintains a home in Alaska but it is believed that he has been unable to obtain citizenship here, probably due to his status as a Canadian citizen (5). Apart from this he also has permission from every country in the world to fly through their air space, something no other person or country or person on earth has managed to do. The move that changed Santa Inc. into what we know it today was Santa's decision to promote certain toy companies in exchange for large sums of money. As part of this move Santa abandoned the green coat that he had worn since the late 1700s (6) and adopted a red and white one in one given him by Coca-cola at the turn of the 20th century in one of the most audacious examples of product marketing to date.        As you can see, Santa is not the jolly fat man that we have all been lead to believe. Instead, he is a both tyrant and a remarkably capable business man. Now you know the truth, spread the word and join the cause, lets take Christmas back from this fat man and give it to the people. 1) http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/ 2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_Acts 3) http://www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ICC 4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa#Origins see section titled "Home" 5) http://www.dave-h.com/images/Funny/Canada__s_Army_Motivator_by_UnholyChronus.jpg 6) http://www.happywink.org/christmas-day/evolution-of-modern-day-santa.html 7) I can't find the article at the moment, but trust me, all the myths agree that at first he only helped the less fortunate. Giving gifts to all the good little boys and girls came later. 8) http://cartoons.osu.edu/nast/santa_camp.htm