By Patricia Lee Sharpe
Santa Claus is in a tizzy. Less than 24 hours to tweak the Big List, to endorse or reverse the Big Decisions. Who’s been naughty? Who’s been nice? Who gets the nifty gifts? Who gets the air-polluting coal?
Coal! It’s a symbol of the worst kind of hell, the hell of exclusion from the goodies. If you don’t get into heaven, which is the ultimate A-list, you are going to feel destroyed, even if you aren’t freezing or broiling (coal-assisted) à la Dante or Revelations. Humiliating!
Of course, there’s the bribery route for persuading Santa to change his mind and bestow the dreamy gifts where they weren’t intended. The tubby old guy is a sucker for a plate of Christmas cookies. Ho! Ho! Ho! Pecan delights!
Congress is like that, too. Lavishly heaped platters of cookies produce legislation that lets greedy bankers and financiers off the hook for unethical behavior. Probably, if you’re in the mind for precedent, the magi who presented those costly gifts to the Christ child made out pretty well, too. No coals for them on earth, although it's hard not to hope for a heavenly balancing of the books. Especially in regard to those bankers whose giant-sized stockings are stuffed to overflowing after they’ve lavished millions on Cookies for Congress and Sweets for the Senate. The Senate! The Congress! I’m referring to those people who are supposed to be our representatives, but aren’t really, because all we have to offer is votes. Votes! Bah humbug!
As for those unemployed voters who can’t offer a single oatmeal cookie because they can barely afford a bowl of Cheerios for their kids this year, our well fed and financed representatives aren’t in the mood to play Santa Claus. They’ve turned into a bunch of grinches instead. Tax cuts for the wealthy will be protected, but the extension of the payroll tax holiday isn’t flying so well. For the wealthy: let them eat caviar. For the poor: let them pay taxes. What's more, there may not be enough coal to go around, either. Not that the reindeer will complain. Fewer visits to make this Christmas eve.
Well, let’s face it, the poor have been naughty, haven’t they? They’ve failed to take advantage of every individual’s responsibility to make full use of America’s equal opportunity to achieve the American dream of goodies galore all year round. Some of the indigent have shown themselves to be spectacularly inept at keeping the miserable subsidies they’ve had in the past. All their begging hasn’t produced enough funds for patching the holes in the safety net, while those clever clever plutocrats seem to have no trouble holding on to their oil and gas subsidies. And bankers’ salaries have increased this year! Wow! Those guys know how to work the system! I wonder how many cases of fine old Scotch were included with the butter cookies they set out for Congress this year.
Meanwhile, poor old Santa, stuck up there by the North Pole, where the ice cap under his workshops and warehouses is melting away. He can’t rely on snail mail any more because it’s getting slower and slower. As for his satellite internet service, it’s been cut off by the U.S. government, on the grounds that terrorists might use it. Fortunately, he and the elves got their flu shots before the government decided that terrorists might benefit from scholarly information sharing. So, in the next few years, they'll be dying of natural flu instead. Us, too. How wonderful it is to be so well taken care of.
To return to the main subject, even Santa's life style has indeed come under threat. Once upon a time the Pole was a safe quiet place. Santa had a Scandinavian-style ice palace to snuggle into at the end of a long hard night’s work. He had his cookies and Single Malt served by acquiescent elves, before he did a little (um) spooning with the babe who replaced Mrs. Claus a few years ago. And yet he’s not entirely innocent when it comes to global warming from generously subsidized carbon emissions.
That's right. Don’t be fooled by the reindeer mystique. Santa’s a slave to the new technology, a carbon criminal from his fur lined boots to his fur lined hat. That sleigh? Looks traditional from the outside, maybe, but it’s jet-assisted (the Europeans may increase his landing fees), and Rudolph’s inflamed nose is hide-it-in-plain-sight camouflage for radar, sonar and a super powerful tasar to take out undercover operatives, who have been making inroads on his plum pudding and Glenfiddich. And move over, Google maps! No more guesswork with deliveries. Santa has acquired a fleet of drones to keep tabs on all of us all the time (except in Europe where people have a peculiar hang up about privacy).
What’s more, Santa's drone-mounted super-fast computers do instant analysis. One teensy little bad move unaccompanied by an iron-clad IOU for macaroons and do-re-mi, and you move to the Coal List. It’s a fail-safe system, which Santa picked up from the USG. You can’t have too much surveillance, if you want to be in control of the game.
Well, I guess that’s about all for now. Have a happy (religious or purely cultural) Christmas. I have an unbreakable date with a bag of chocolate chips. Got to bake some cookies.