Monthly Archives: December 2019

Lying to Your Kids: Your Questions About Santa (Parts 5&6 of 6)

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I wrote a mostly serious think-piece called ‘Why the Santa Myth is Bad for Your Children’s Elf’, which you can read by clicking on the highlighted link. The article inspired a set of questions, challenges and accusations, which I’ve been addressing in bite-sized pieces, day-by-day (well, every other day), in the run-up to Christmas. I hope this final section makes you laugh if we’re sympatico on the subject, and still makes you laugh even if you think I’m a monster (even though it’s clearly you who are the monster). If it makes you think, it’s a mere side-effect, I assure you.

What’s wrong with the whole Santa thing? Why can’t you let kids have their innocence a little longer, when this world is such a terrible, horrible, disgusting, nightmarish place?

The sort of people who trot this one out are usually the sort of people who spend more on their Christmas decorations than the GDPs of most small countries. While the poor line up on Christmas Eve to get tinned turkey from their local food banks, the ‘oh-it’s-nice’ brigade is busy spunking out £50-a-pop on individual strings of ethically-sourced tinsel from John Lewis and £600-a-go on tree baubles designed by John Paul Gaultier that have been pain-stakingly moulded from impressions taken of Paul Hollywood’s balls, all in the name of erecting a festive art installation in their homes that’s as close to the anti-septic perfection of a picture in an upmarket catalogue that a person can get their house to look and feel before it tips over into becoming a modern-day emperor’s mausoleum.

“We need Santa as a bulwark against this horrible world,” they say, as their kids open up a parcel containing a functioning, sentient robot and a wrist-watch that can tell the time in other galaxies. “They need to keep their innocence,” they say, as they drive their kids to Jenners’ Boxing Day sale, passing housing schemes along the way where the kids had out-of-date toothpaste for breakfast and dog-food for dinner, and had to take their siblings on in hand-to-hand combat for the privilege.

“Why is this world such a big, cruel, savage toilet?” they ask, as they fill out forms to send their kids to schools with wrought-iron gates and ivy creeping up the balustrades.

Santa doesn’t visit the schemes and estates where the red on the Aquafresh is actually blood. He just flies over them, as high above the ground as possible, tutting and shaking his head. Maybe he ejects the odd teddy bear with an eye missing, or a spoon without a handle, just to feel festive, but he daren’t land. “They’d have the fucking runners off my sleigh in a heartbeat,” he says, with a nervous laugh. “And they’d have the reindeer fighting to the death in an underground betting shop.”

Believing in Santa never did YOU any harm though, did it?

First of all, how do you know? How do any of us know? Millions upon millions of Americans think it’s normal to want school teachers to carry guns, or for poor people to die in agony because they can’t afford hospital treatment. That’s only crazy from the outside looking in.

Anyway, I’m not sure that exposure to organised religion at a young age did me any lasting harm (I’m an ardent atheist these days), but that doesn’t mean that I consider organised religion to be harmless. It’s incredibly dangerous, and in the wrong hands and heads incalculably so.

My gran smoked for about nine decades and didn’t die directly from smoking-related illnesses, but that doesn’t mean that smoking is safe.

I once lathered my naked body in liquid LSD and then tried to recreate the classic arcade game ‘Frogger’ by repeatedly running backwards and forwards across the motorway, but I was killed by a truck and came back as a High Priest of the Gnome people, so maybe that’s not such a great example.

In any case, whatever supernatural stories you need to tell yourself to make you feel better about your own actions, or less afraid of your own inevitable death, and whatever all-powerful entities you need to create in order to give those stories life, are all absolutely fine. They are. Really. They’re great. More power to you. Just so long as they don’t bring harm to any other living being – yourself included.

But the second you start seeking out other like-minded ‘souls’ with similar beliefs and supernatural figureheads to yours, with a view to forming a club, one which quickly moves to multiply and immortalise its rules and beliefs in the form of some irrevocable holy manifesto, the contents of which are destined to be poured down the throats of ‘heathens’ and children everywhere for time immemorial, then that’s not so fine. Then it becomes political. But worse…

Because while political leaders and political ideas can change and evolve with time (in theory, at least), religious leaders and ideas – in the main – do not. Otherwise, what’s the point? Either your God has all the power and all the answers, or he’s a pretty shit God, right? Religion is nothing more than politics preached from the cloud and the pulpit, as opposed to the podium and the press conference.

The big difference is, though – again in theory, and specific to this place and time – I’ve got at least some say over whether or not my kids are proselytised into a religion, or indeed a political party. I don’t seem to have any power over whether or not my kids should have a belief in Santa foisted upon them.

Even if the Santa myth had no ill effects, and didn’t constitute a massive breach of trust between child and parent/guardian, even then… why are people who don’t want their kids to believe in Santa forced to go along with it? What makes this relatively new and dangerously commercialised myth more important and sacred than a person’s right to raise their children the way they want to?

I’ve tried various things to gently shake my eldest son from his belief (I’m part of a team, remember, so I can’t just scream ‘SANTA IS A HOAX’ in his face fifty times a day, as much as I may want to). When my eldest kid was four I asked him: “How do you know it’s Santa and not just me and your mum going downstairs and putting presents out?”

He thought for a moment.

“Because he comes at night. And YOU’LL be asleep too. So it can’t be you.”

Such quick-thinking, such mental gymnastics, but all employed in the service of doing somersaults over ghosts. What damage are these falsehoods doing to his brain? Imagination is fine. Lies are not.

I stroked his hair and looked him dead in the eyes. “I just want you to remember, when you’re older, that there was one man in this world who didn’t lie to you.” And I pointed to myself.

That’ll come in handy if I need him to avenge me in the future…

Merry Christmas/Sharkmas one and all.

Dreamtime: Night-time Convos with your Kids

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Trying to get our nursery and early-primary age kids to sleep can take its toll on our sanity. We sit there in the dark with them for what feels like days as they pick at the wall, drum on the side of the bed, flick the buttons on plug sockets, and contort themselves into shapes Russian gymnasts would baulk at – doing anything and everything, really, except closing their eyes – all the while fighting the rising tide of irritation that’s pushing us ever closer to Hulking-the-fuck-out. Inexplicably, despite our best and most desperate efforts, we’re usually the ones who end up falling asleep. The indignity of it: drummed to sleep by our own over-tired kids.

It’s not only easier just to give up and go with it: it’s better. After all, we have some of the most marvellous conversations of all with our kids inside that limbo-land between hyperactivity and unconsciousness. Daft, sweet conversations full of warmth, whimsy, lunacy and laughter: Twin Peaks meets Mr Tumble with a dash of Austin Powers – with banter that sings, zings and pops like dialogue from an Aaron Sorkin show written exclusively for kids.

On those nights you’d gladly sit in the half-dark chatting nonsense with them forever.

My kids sleep in single beds on opposite sides of their bedroom. The space between the two beds is small, but large enough to house a black leather reclining chair, upon which my wife or I will sit, depending upon whose turn it is to do the stories. Our youngest, Christopher, who’s now three, always falls asleep first. He insists on cuddling your arm, which he pulls into his bed and yanks close to his chest like a favourite teddy bear. Jack, freshly five, is a different story. He’s almost always still awake by the end of the last story, and will do everything in his power to repel sleep. The other night, after about the five millionth shush, I decided to indulge him.

‘Daddy,’ he said. ‘Did I tell you I saw Santa at school today?’

Regular readers of this blog will be well aware of my opposition to the Santa myth. They’ll also know that I was over-ruled and out-gunned on the matter, hence why Jack fully believes in Santa, knows I don’t, and feels deeply sorry for me as a consequence. Never-the-less, I decided to indulge in a dance of devilment around the periphery of his belief.

‘How many Santas have you seen this year in total, do you reckon?’ I asked him.

He pursed his lips. ‘Two.’

‘I think it’s three.’

He nodded, as if to say, ‘Yeah, what’s your fucking point?’

I pressed on, adopting the air of a smug prosecutor about to snare him in a Columbo-esque trap: ‘Was it the same Santa each time, do you think – the same guy just moving around – or were they all different Santas, like there was more than one of them?’

I could see him processing this. ‘They were… different, I think,’ he admitted.

‘A-HA!’ I said, leaping to my feet, and rhythmically slapping him about his cheeks. ‘IN YOUR FACE, YOU GULLIBLE LOSER! THAT’S IT! THAT’S BLOWN THIS CASE WIDE OPEN! HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW, YOU DUPE? YOU DORK? YOU HOPELESS MORON?’

OK, I didn’t say that. I’m not a complete monster. What I said was: ‘Is there only one Santa in the world, do you think? One real Santa?’

He squidged up his mouth in thought. ‘Yes,’ he said earnestly.

Time to wave your cigar, Columbo. ‘So if only one of the three Santas you met this year was the real Santa… then what are the other two?’

‘Robots,’ he said, without any hesitation, and with considerable authority.

So much for Columbo. All credit to him, that’s a bloody brilliant answer. It’s just a shame his quick mind and powerful imagination has to be employed in the service of a vast conspiracy perpetuated annually by millions of quasi-Stalinist Santanistas [And, yes, I am tremendous fun at parties].

‘Do you still not believe in Santa, daddy?’

He looked like a little puppy dog, and I suddenly felt like an angry miser with my foot drawn back for a kick. Now that the Santa myth was entrenched in his psyche – thanks to the endless reinforcement of it by everyone around him – his happiness was indivisible from its shape. I held his hopes and dreams in my hands. My truth – the actual, literal truth – would only make him cry now, even though he’d already heard it from me during previous discussions on the topic. The lie’s roots were now too deep to be extracted without killing the host.

‘I’m still not convinced he exists,’ I told him, softening my stance in order to preserve it, all while taking care not to break his tiny little heart. You bloody monsters. I wasn’t done with this line of reasoning yet, though. I still entertained hopes of helping him to a breakthrough; hand him the key to cast off the shackles himself.

I stroked my chin. ‘What do you think Santa does for the rest of the year when he isn’t out delivering presents?’

‘Well, he tells the elves to get things ready.’

Ah, that’s healthy, isn’t it? In Jack’s eyes Santa is some Victorian-era factory owner, cracking the whip to get those marginalised ethnics working their tiny green butts off. I shook my head. ‘But that won’t take up too much of his time.  What does he do all the rest of the time? The other eleven months of his year?’

Jack batted my question back like it was a slow-moving ping-pong ball. ‘He just sits on his bum. On a chair.’

I had to run with this. Best case scenario, I kill Santa. Worst case scenario, I coax some laughs from that little mouth of his. Hopefully both. ‘So Santa’s got magical powers. He can travel all over the world in one night, delivering hundreds of millions of presents, but he doesn’t use that power the rest of the year? Like, to stop robberies? Or to help put out fires? “SANTA, HELP ME, I’M BURNING!” “Sorry, son, I’m too busy just sitting in my chair.”’

Jack laughed. ‘No. He just sits there.’

‘That lazy fat git.’

Jack laughed again.

‘”SANTA, HELP ME, MY SHOP IS BEING ROBBED!” “Bugger off, it’s June! Can’t you see I’m sitting in my chair, for Christ sake?’”

I left Jack with the imprint of a kiss on his forehead, and a room ricocheting with giggles. Success. Just as long as he stayed asleep now.

There are limits to this whimsy lark.

A little while later I was in my own bed watching TV. This is still something of a novelty, as we only became a two-TV household relatively recently. Jack appeared at the doorway revealing first a foot, then a shoulder, and finishing off with the big reveal of his bed-mussed head.

‘Daddy,’ he said, his face downcast. ‘I keep trying to get to sleep, but I keep thinking of zombies, and I don’t want to go to sleep because then I’ll dream of zombies.’

I paused the TV. I was watching Vikings. Probably best not to add rape and decapitation to his list of nightmares. He watched me for a moment or two, wondering if I was going to order him back to his bed or make room next to me. I smiled.

At times like this I always think about the episode of Cracker where Fitz delivers his mother’s eulogy. He tearfully recounts how as children he and his brother crept up to their living room to watch a boxing match on TV through a crack in the door. Long past their bedtime, Fitz somehow just knew if he pushed open the door his mother would let them both into the warmth of the room to watch the match with them. Fitz’s brother later tells him that he had no interest in the boxing match. He’d only wanted to watch his mum and dad.

‘Come here,’ I said to Jack. All thoughts of zombies must have staggered from his thoughts, else they were never there to begin with, because he bounded over to my side of the bed with a massive grin on his face. I budged over and let him snuggle in.

‘Zombies, huh?’ I said.

‘Every time I try to think of something nice, it turns into a zombie.’

I considered it for a moment. ‘Well have you tried thinking of something that’s a zombie first and then turning it into something nice?’

He looked up at the ceiling and a little smile appeared on his face.

‘It’s your brain. You tell it what to think, not the other way around.’

He seemed happy with this.

‘Hey,’ I said, tousling his head. ‘Do you think there’s a little zombie boy out there somewhere creeping into his dad’s bed because he woke up having a nightmare about a normal little boy?’

I could feel Jack’s grin creeping against my bicep. He fell asleep soon after, just as his little brother burst into the room, eyes aflame, hair a mess. He fell asleep on the other bicep.

I didn’t press play on the TV for a long time afterward. I had no need of it. All I wanted to do was watch my two boys. While I still could.

Time is precious.

Lying to Your Kids: Your Questions About Santa (Part 4 of 6)

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I wrote a mostly serious think-piece called ‘Why the Santa Myth is Bad for Your Children’s Elf’, which you can read by clicking on the highlighted link. The article inspired a set of questions, challenges and accusations, which I’ve been addressing in bite-sized pieces, day-by-day (well, day-by-every-other-day), in the run-up to Christmas. I hope it makes you laugh if we’re sympatico on the subject, and still makes you laugh even if you think I’m a monster (even though it’s clearly you who are the monster). No questions this time. I just want you to imagine an alternate universe where Christmas was never celebrated, and instead…

Yee-Haw! It’s Sharkmas!

Imagine if you heard about a culture where every June the 15th a fat cowboy called Finn Clintson sped around the world on the back of a flying great white shark, stopping off along the way to eat piles of air fresheners from people’s cars, his mission to deliver millions of boxes of rice to the kids of the world, but only those who can play darts to a professional standard.

As early as May, families start putting neon sharks in their windows. They take their kids to aquariums where they sit on Finn Clintson’s great white shark (a stuffed one, of course) and tell Finn what kind of rice they’d like for Sharkmas. On Sharkmas Eve, all the dads go out to their cars and lay fresh stacks of air fresheners on the passenger seats. They leave the doors unlocked so Finn Clintson doesn’t have to break through a window.

Between April and June the cries of ONE HUNDRED AND EIIIIIIIGGGHTTTYY can be heard bellowing from every window, and down every street, as kids everywhere pepper their houses with dart-holes in their zeal to emulate their Sharkmas hero, Les ‘Danger’ Wallace. Listen carefully at any window behind which a pushy parent is coaching a kid to be the best darts’ player they can be, and you’ll hear things like: “DO YOU EVEN WANT TEMPURA RICE THIS YEAR, ABIGAIL?” and “YOU MISSED DOUBLE-TOP? IT’S LIKE YOU WANT TO MAKE FINN CLINTSON’S SHARK DIE OF SADNESS!!”

And no-one’s allowed to tell their kids that Finn Clintson isn’t real, or where the rice really comes from, or that sharks can’t fly. Even the schools keep up the charade, bringing Finn Clintsons into the school and having the kids make little wooden great white shark decorations to dangle from their Sharkmas Hat Rack. Churches teach how the world was created by a giant basking shark called Tony.

What would you think of that culture? Absolutely bloody mental, right?

Happy Sharkmas, you douchebags.

Lying to Your Kids: Your Questions About Santa (Part 3 of 6)

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I wrote a mostly serious think-piece called ‘Why the Santa Myth is Bad for Your Children’s Elf’, which you can read by clicking on the highlighted link. The article inspired a set of questions, challenges and accusations, which I’m going to address in bite-sized pieces, day-by-day (well, every other day), in the run-up to Christmas. I hope it makes you laugh if we’re sympatico on the subject, and still makes you laugh even if you think I’m a monster (even though it’s clearly you who are the monster).

Oh, come on, you believed in Santa as a child, and I’ll bet YOU liked it, you big spoil-sport

I’ve got quite a simple response to that question, really.

Nothing should be done to inhibit a child’s burgeoning critical faculties, or to corrupt their very sense of the world as an observable, rational and comprehensible place. You can pretend, play-act, stretch the limits of their imaginations, sure, but don’t for Christ’s sake have them believing a lie for seven fucking years!

Don’t get me wrong. You’re right. I myself used to believe wholeheartedly in Santa Claus. I used to get letters from him, in very ornate handwriting. And I thought: this could only be the work of a magical being; he writes like a bloody pro. This guy’s the real deal. I also used to get plenty of Valentine’s cards. I don’t think I can properly express the horror I felt on the day I was old enough to realise that the letters from Santa and the Valentine’s cards were all in the same handwriting. That was a shock to me. “Well, Santa. I see last year’s presents have come with a few strings attached. I’m not that sort of boy. But maybe throw in a few Easter eggs and we’ll talk.”

The truth was even more horrible. I cross-referenced the Santa letters and the valentine’s cards with the handwriting on my birthday cards. Turns out the Santa letters and the Valentine’s Day cards were from my gran.

“Roses are red, and I’m your mum’s mummy, just wait till I stuff you, back up in my tummy.”

I know she was just trying to boost my fragile little-boy ego, but I really bought in to the whole romantic fantasy.

And all that time the unrequited love of my young life was a bloated septuagenarian Glasweigen lady who smelled of cabbage. I was cat-fished by own gran before it was even a thing.

So, no, Christmas was quite traumatic, actually.

Quick Guide to Today’s Election Candidates

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I’ve compiled a quick run-down of the prime ministerial/first ministerial candidates and their policies to help you make an informed choice on this historic occasion.

Jeremy Corbyn – Labour

A true community activist, Jeremy Corbyn was a founding member of the IRA (Islington Radicals Association) and is still active in both the PLO (Peckham Leftist Organisation) and ISIS (Ilford Secularists Information Service). When he isn’t politicking, he likes to while away the evenings writing pamphlets, which are then posted through people’s doors by a collective of canvasers, each of whom wears a free-range beret and a badge that says ‘NELSON MANDELA – ALWAYS FREE AT THE POINT OF ENTRY’. The only payment they receive for doing this is a promise they’ll get to decide who’s first against the wall come the revolution. Some of Jeremy’s more popular pamphlets include ‘Nationalising Masturbation: The Hard Questions’, ‘Choosing the Right Balaclava for You’ and ‘Why Pantomimes are Fascist: Oh No They Aren’t, Oh Yes They Are’.

When Corbyn isn’t setting fivers alight just so that he can douse the Queen’s silently burning face with his cold piss, he likes to dress up as Stalin and masturbate gamely over ant colonies.

Five most striking policy proposals

  • A vow to give over all football grounds to Russian turnip farmers
  •  Make it law that the Royal Family must dress in shell-suits and smoke filterless cigarettes
  • New sessions of parliament must be opened with a six-hour long Irish jig with everyone dressed as leprechauns
  • Violent criminals to be given a cuddle and sent on their way
  • Death to the west

Jo Swinson – Liberal Democrats

Jo Swinson comes from a long line of Swins, a name that means ‘pig’ or ‘swine’ in Danish.  Swinson plans to change her name to Swindaughter on the eve of the election, to remind voters that she’s a woman, a brave woman, a strong woman, a real woman’s woman, womany all over, yep, she’s a woman alright, surprised she hasn’t mentioned it – and then a few minutes later she’ll change it to Jo Swintersex when someone in her campaign team points out how violently transphobic she’s being.

‘I’m a woman, my mother was a woman, and I really rather enjoyed both the Ghostbusters and the Oceans Eleven remake,’ Swinson announced at the Lib Dem party conference this year. ‘If I become prime minister, I’ll make sure that they do all-female remakes of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Dunkirk and a new Cheech and Chong called Debbie and Samantha.’

It’s no secret that Jo Swinson’s life-long hatred of squirrels makes her the most dangerous candidate in this election. She’s already beaten one to death live on TV during Saturday Kitchen, afterwards vowing to eradicate squirrel-kind with a nuclear strike the first chance she gets.

Jo Swinson’s accent has been genetically modified to make her sound gradually less and less Scottish. Certainly no-one from Glasgow, or even her native Milngavnie, sounds like Swinson.  She used to sound exactly like Paul Coia, but her accent was experimented on in a hail of screams and lightning, Frankenstein style, until it died and came back as a zombie, except it’s pronounced ‘zoahowambee’ now for some fucking reason.

Five most striking policy proposals

  • The hateful, racist, transphobic US TV series Friends to be banned
  • All citizens must kill at least six squirrels a month, and prove it or they die
  • The adoption of all Tory policies
  • Earth to be re-named Her-th
  • Clitoris to be re-named Clito-her

Boris Johnson – Conservatives

Boris Johnson lives in a fridge, and likes to kill poor people. He’s really rather fond of the ‘working class’, but only in this sentence:  ‘Tory policies to kill the poor are working! Class!’ When he isn’t shuffling around like a recently-divorced Dulux dog that’s been shoved inside an un-ironed suit, he’s riding his bike around London with all the grace and poise of Officer Doofy fucking a vacuum cleaner.

Look closely as Boris is out on the campaign trail and you’ll notice that his arms are robotic (remotely controlled by a hidden Michael Gove), and his real arms are secured behind his back with cable tie. This is to stop Boris from trying to fuck every married woman to whom he’s introduced, and to prevent him from giving the fingers to poor people.

Boris taught himself to read using old World War 2-era boys’ comics with names like ‘Adventurous Rascals’ and ‘Cor Blimey, the Gerrys Nicked Me Spyglass’, which is why he still says things like ‘bother’, ‘gosh’, ‘blimey’, ‘Whizzo’ and ‘black people are genetically inferior’. Both he and his dad like to write shite spy thrillers about floppy-haired fat cunts called Boris saving the world from the insidious evil of people who aren’t white, English, upper-class, floppy-haired fat cunts called Boris.

At university, Boris Johnson introduced David Cameron to the pig whose head he would later f***.

Former leader of the Scottish Conservatives Ruth Davidson has announced that she will go skinny dipping in Loch Ness if the SNP gain 50 seats in this election. Boris has admitted that’s the one thing he probably couldn’t wank to.

Five most striking policy proposals

  • Top up the winter fuel allowance for the elderly by giving them homeless people to burn
  • Boris to be given a pass from the rigours of actual leadership so he can just make spoof videos all day
  • All new tower blocks to be doused in paraffin and made of cardboard
  • Questions to be made illegal
  • The NHS to be sold to Saudi Arabia as a weapon

Nigel Farage – Brexit Party

The Brexit Party’s party political broadcast this year was just an old man in a British-flag-patterned suit and top hat standing on a cliff-top angrily kicking Rogan Joshs into the sea, as Nigel Farage glared menacingly on necking a pint of Belhaven Best.

Nigel used to be in charge of UKIP, which has now been disassembled and put into storage in a warehouse just outside Kent, occasionally checked on by people called Dick Brayne and Pat Mountain, who sound like they were invented by the Viz Letter’s Page.

When Nigel isn’t peddling right-wing, racist propaganda, lying to the working classes and feathering his own nest, he likes to peddle right-wing, racist propaganda, deceive the working classes and feather his own nest. He’s going to be on next year’s Strictly Come Dancing.

Five most striking policy proposals

  • Something, something, something racist
  • [gulps down a pint of Belhaven]
  • Those bloody eastern Europeans! [shakes fist]
  • I’m just like you, salt of the earth, I am [eats caviar from a £50 note]
  • Give the Queen a knighthood

Nicola Sturgeon – SNP

Nicola Sturgeon is irreplaceable. Literally. The SNP can only be helmed by people with fish, or fish-related, names, and until a prospective leadership candidate comes along called Johnny Halibut or Vicky Basking-Clark, they’re going to have to keep Nicola extra safe.

Nicola Sturgeon has infuriated rivals by continuing to answer questions put to her directly without obfuscation or deceit, something that has [Woah, woah, woah. This is supposed to be a ridiculous little article that mocks each of the parties equally. Your bias is showing a little here – Ed] [Em, I don’t have an editor. It’s just me. I write this website myself.] [Then who the fuck am I? Am I just a guy called Ed? – Ed] [I don’t know, man.] [What do you mean you don’t know? If I don’t actually exist then it must be you who’s typing these words I’m saying right now, right? – Ed] [You don’t have to keep signing off as Ed now that we’ve established you don’t actually exist] [I’ll bloody well do what I like! Anyway, stop obfuscating. Why are you giving the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon an easy ride here? It’s the measure of a good satirist that they can skew even their own heroes and preferences, you know – Frank] [I’m not a satirist though. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I tend to make lots of easy jokes about knobs and bodily fluids and things. And Frank? Really?] [Yeah, since I’m not Ed I figured I could be whoever I liked – Gandalf] [This is getting ridiculous.] [Answer the question! Why are you giving the SNP an easy ride? – Fozzy Bear] [Because the SNP is the party with the fairest and most progressive policies, and represents the best hope for Scotland, and Nicola Sturgeon is a decent, measured, intelligent, capable and consummate politician who actually seems to give a fuck about what she says and what she does] [….That’s not very funny, is it? – An elk called Richard] [No, I suppose it isn’t]

Happy voting, comrades.

Lying to Your Kids: Your Questions About Santa (Part 2 of 6)

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I wrote a mostly serious think-piece called ‘Why the Santa Myth is Bad for Your Children’s Elf’, which you can read by clicking on the highlighted link. The article inspired a set of questions, challenges and accusations, which I’m going to address in bite-sized pieces, day-by-day (well, every other day), in the run-up to Christmas. I hope it makes you laugh if we’re sympatico on the subject, and still makes you laugh even if you think I’m a monster (even though it’s clearly you who are the monster).

What have you got against kids using their imaginations and believing in magic, Jamie? Don’t you realise that without Santa the world would be a grey, dull and empty place?

Of course, you’re right.

It’s only at Christmas-time that we permit our kids to exercise their imaginations in glorious, ambulatory 4D instead of just forcing them to mainline TV through their eyes, absorbing hour after hour of YouTube videos of kids opening plastic egg-cases (for some inexplicable reason, this is considered entertainment).

Our kids spend eleven months of every year shuffling around the house like robot butlers haunted by the souls of civil service middle-managers, daring only to imagine that the next day and the next day and the day after that will be exactly the same as it was today.

Until, that is, the igniting spark of Christmas arrives! Huzzah! ‘Tis yuletime, so come to life, my children. Come to life! It’s time to play, to dare, to dream. Let your thoughts have substance, for ’tis the season of magic (‘Tis also the season that teaches kids that it’s okay for fat old men to break into houses in the dead of night as children sleep).

It’s the time of year where parents everywhere say to their spawn: “Come on, kids, let’s begin your officially-mandated month of very strictly regulated imaginative role-play. I’m going to channel all of my dead-eyed vapidity into regurgitating the same old stock-phrases about Santa that I trot out every year, and pretend that I’m taking you on some unforgettable, mind-bending journey to the very periphery of the knowable universe, when in reality I’m just lazy and deeply unimaginative, and SANTA’S NICE, AND I LIKE NICE THINGS, THINGS THAT MAKE PEOPLE GO AWWWWWW, AND YOU WILL NOT TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME, YOU LITTLE FUCK-STAIN! Plus, I really like accessorising trees, and making my house look like a John Lewis catalogue, so when I take pictures of my decorations and put them on-line it makes everyone question their sad little lives, and how they’ll never match up to me so they might as well convert to Islam next year.”

Magic is for life, not just for Christmas. Santa is nothing more than a template, a suggestion, a Shutter-stock photo. Kids should be creating their own mental mischief all the time, every day. And you, as a parent or a big person in their lives, should be running around the house with them pretending to be fifty-foot-high hedgehogs on the run from the Intergalactic Council of Sentient Jelly Cakes, or bears with the heads of dolphins, or screaming at each other in made-up languages. Kids need magic. It sustains them. They just don’t need their magic accompanied by a side-order of lies.

Why is it so important to deceive them as we enchant them? Wouldn’t Santa still be a lark if the kids knew he wasn’t really ‘real’? Of course he would. Harry Potter isn’t real, Star Wars isn’t real, and people have become multi-millionaires a million times over on the back of that shit.

Do you want to go ‘all in’? Is that what you want? You want to go all in? Let’s do it then! Let’s tell our kids that EVERY fictional character is real: Ronald McDonald, the Honey Monster, the Gruffalo, Mr Hankey, Death, dragons, Scooby Doo, Muttley, Garfield, Jesus, Danny Dyer. ALL of them. You want magic? HERE’S your fucking magic!! Check out this world: kids who can’t eat their Rice Krispies because they’re frightened that Snap and Crackle are going to burst out of the packet and kick the fuck out of them; kids who think Voldermort is going to pick them up from school and then turn into a giant spider and eat them. Let your mentally-exhausted children live in that world. Let them run THAT gauntlet, you sickos.

Lying to Your Kids: Your Questions About Santa (Part 1 of 6)

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I wrote a mostly serious think-piece called ‘Why the Santa Myth is Bad for Your Children’s Elf’, which you can read by clicking on the highlighted link. The article inspired a set of questions, challenges and accusations, which I’m going to address in bite-sized pieces, day-by-day, in the run-up to Christmas. I hope it makes you laugh if we’re sympatico on the subject, and still makes you laugh even if you think I’m a monster (even though it’s clearly you who are the monster).

Why are you trying to rubbish Santa, Jamie? It’s tradition. We’ve always had Santa and elves and reindeer at Christmas time. ALWAYS.

Yes, you’re right, indeed we have. Who can forget the famous cave paintings depicting early man clubbing a bear to death as Donner and Blitzen whizz above his head on a coke-fuelled adventure, pooping down gift-wrapped bones and Christmas cards made from human skin? Or Jesus sitting on Santa’s lap asking for a camel that can go through the eye of a needle, and Santa shaking his head and asking, “Is that on the Pray-station 4?”

The Santa we know today – big red coat, bushy white beard, jelly belly and jolly disposition – has had more origin stories than all of the heroes and villains at Marvel and DC combined. He’s an ever-shifting mish-mash of Christian saints, pagan myth and alpine folklore who’s been constantly co-opted and re-packaged by ad-men, marketers and movie moguls the world over, to the point where he’d be almost unrecognisable to those long-ago mountain children who grew up hearing tales of the petty, vengeful old bastard who partnered up with a half-goat, half-demon called Krampus to go around the countryside stuffing kids into a sack. Ho-Ho-Ho(sef Fritzl).

Shall we bring Krampus back then? If it’s tradition you’re thirsty for? After all, horny old Krampus is far more traditional than the Coca-Cola-becoated old coot who shimmies down our chimneys when our kids are sleeping. I’m all for it a Krampus comeback, incidentally. I think Christmas would be improved immeasurably by the introduction of blood-curdling terror (which would also be a perfect complement to Brussels Sprouts).

On second thoughts, let’s not get too hung up on tradition. We used to do a lot of things back in the day: burn witches; stone adulterers; smoke on aeroplanes; vote Liberal Democrat. There’s always room for change. We don’t need to preserve the status quo (and by ‘status quo’ I mean ‘any established or prevailing world-order’ just as much as I do the 1970s rock band Status Quo, who were fucking terrible).

We already took Jesus out of Christmas.

What’s one more fictional bearded character?

Off to fuck you go, Santa, my good fellow.