Category Archives: *SANTA’S JOURNAL*

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.

Santa’s Journal (Entry 9) – May 25 2013

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No stress today. No phone calls, no bullshit. That was my vow. Well, Margaret commanded it because of my heart, actually. Ordered me to take it easy, and have a day of peace.

And I was largely successful. The most excitement came this morning as I was dozing in my armchair, when I thought I heard something coming from the snow dunes. What can I say: it’s a thrilling existence. Hell of a racket, though. It sounded like something was shaking the ground like it was a shag-pile rug, and scattering the snow like debris. Did I hear it? I think we’ve established that I’m getting old, and every sensory organ is packing up one at a time for the old folks’ home, so maybe I didn’t. Besides, when I heard this noise – that may or may not have been of phantom origin – I was still straddling the gulf between Sandman and Snowman, Barbados and Lapland, asleep and awake, so I wasn’t even in possession of the sound, deductive powers of Eamonn Holmes, never mind Sherlock Holmes. I thought maybe Margaret had dropped another tray of mince pies in the kitchen. She hadn’t. She suggested that my own nightmarishly loud snoring had woken me up. It’s possible. My snores sound like a plane-load of panicked, parachuting pigs making an emergency landing onto a passing convoy of motorbikes, just as God squats over their faces and roars out a planet-chewing fart.

Conditions were pleasant in the living room this morning, though, I can tell you. The fire was roaring and spitting by my side. Lovely, warm and stress-free. Screw excitement: there’s nothing quite like dozing off in your favourite chair in-front of your favourite hot fire, the newspaper crumpled on your lap and your slippers clinging to your feet like two tufts of toasty cloud.

Well, unless it’s that fantasy of mine where a naked, voluptuous model on a reclining chair awaits my descent down the chimney, legs akimbo, a cigarette dangling seductively from her ruby-red lips, greeting me in husky tones with the words: ‘So, Santa, let’s see if I can help you empty that bulging sack of yours.’

The fantasy always hovers in the air above my fire-toasted armchair, waiting for me to sit down and slip it on like a virtual reality sex helmet. Hey, I may play the part of Santa, but I’m still a man, right? I’m Frank McGarry: as red-blooded as I am red-jacketed.

It’s just a shame that Margaret’s idea of sex these days is extra clotted cream on our scones. There’s a euphemism in there somewhere, I’m sure.

‘Aw, look at you,’ Margaret’ll say as she catches me daydreaming (she thinks I’m daydreaming!), and spots the beaming grin plastered across my  features. ‘What’s making you so happy, my love?’

‘I’m just thinking…’ I’d purr, ‘…of the happiness I bring… to the children of the world.’

As I mentioned at the beginning of this entry, my vow to remain cocooned in peace was only largely successful. I can always count on my bosses at Coca Cola to get my heart beating like the samba. I waited until Margaret was at the shop, and then tried phoning the bastards multiple times to discuss this Dwerg Neuken situation and how they’re treating the elves, and to vent a little of my anger (nobody calls me Mickey Mouse and gets away with it!), but if the phone wasn’t just ringing out, I was being assured by some automated arsehole that ‘my call was very important.’ So important that they completely ignored it about eighty-five times. A day of reckoning is upon them, let me assure you of that…

Santa’s Journal (Entry 8) – May 24 2013

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I spent the morning trying to get through to Coca Cola. Kept getting their switchboard.

‘This is Frank McGarry calling,’ I said in my sternest, boomiest voice. ‘I need to speak with management.’

I always use my real name when I’m angry with them. They know I mean business when I cast off my Santa branding and let my Glasgow show. It didn’t work though. The receptionist told me that the big boss was in meetings all day. I asked for the man under him. Surprise: he’s in meetings too. And the man under him. I think I went through the entire list of staff, top to bottom, trying to find someone to take my call. It turns out that even the guy in the fucking mail room is in meetings today.

Next I called the management at Dwerg Neuken. They’d speak to me, alright, but I’d’ve been better talking to a brick wall. Christ, I’d’ve been better talking to Margaret. I got through to their CEO, some whiny-voiced arsehole by the name of Jorg Griswald, and told him in no uncertain terms that what he was doing to the elves was immoral and deplorable. That the elves were a loyal, decent and hardworking lot who didn’t deserve to have their meagre pay slashed even more. And, besides, if anybody is going to make their lives an unending misery, it should be me!

‘I am full of large apologies today, Mr madam,’ he said, his reedy Norwegian accent going up and down like an asthmatic mouse on a pogo-stick, ‘but what does our business with the little people of the snow have to do to you?’

‘What does it have to do with me?? I’m Santa Claus, motherfucker!!!’

From what I was able to piece together from his terrible command of English, Jorg will answer only to his masters at Coca Cola. I was a mere puppet, a mascot, a breathing piece of branding, scarcely a human being. His exact words were: ‘Sooner I would be taking orders from Mickey Mouse, yes?’

Which is why I’m posting him a big bag of reindeer shite. First class.

 

Santa’s Journal (Entry 7) – May 22 2013

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Gundal came to see me at the house today. Margaret let him in, and made him some scones. She keeps calling him Stephen. ‘But he reminds me of Stephen,’ she keeps telling me. But I’ve no idea who Stephen is, and the disturbing thing is: neither does she. We don’t know anyone called Stephen. Plus, Stephen is a human name. Gundal is an elf name. Gundal has an elf name, largely due to the fact that Gundal is an elf. If we did know somebody called Stephen who reminded us of Gundal, then this Stephen would be three-feet tall, with ears that looked like they’d been caught in a thresher. I worry about the old bird sometimes. Her memory’s not what it once was. It’s playing tricks on her. World-class magician tricks. With added conjuring. Because she’s even started to forget things that she hasn’t even done, and then remembering them again.

Margaret’s memory’s a relay baton being passed between illusion and reality, making a lot of our conversations feel like code-breaking sessions at Bletchley Park. She’s lucid most of the time, so I guess it’s simply yet another wonderful side-effect of ageing, like my eight-day hangovers and fierce urges to urinate that come upon me on-the-hour-every-hour, like Piss FM traffic updates. But I would seem to be her rock, in the sense that her memory and focus never seem to fail her when it comes to my transgressions. Oh, they shine like beacons in the mist of her mind, keeping her anchored to reality. That’s my justification for continuing to leave the toilet seat up and nibbling my knuckle warts, in any case. I’m being noble, and trying to keep her memory ticking over. In many ways I’m a hero, I suppose…

Anyway, I gave Gundal a leg up to one of the armchairs in our living room. Typically, elves are predisposed to jolliness – they’re not grumpy wee bastards like dwarfs. But little Gundal looked like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. His smile was a hyphen, and his eyebrows were like two thin daggers each ready to strike diagonally at their opposing nostrils.

He shared what was troubling him, and as I listened I could feel the anger bubbling in me from boots to beard. The elves have received a memo from Coca Cola telling them that they will no longer be employed directly by Coca Cola. The elves’ work has been subcontracted to a third party, some company called Dwerg Neuken, and its management has sent a communication informing the elves that there will be changes to their working hours, conditions and rates of pay; a new, harsher contract, in essence. He wants me to fight their corner, which of course I’ll do – as I always do. I just don’t know if I’ll have a leg to stand on with Coca Cola given recent events. But what the Hell. Who needs legs when you’ve got fists?

Santa’s Journal – (Entry 6) May 19 2013

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It looks like I’m getting a visit from those suit-wearing, soul-sucking sons of bitches at Coca Cola. They claim to have photographic evidence of corporate vandalism, and want to ‘have a little chat’ about my ‘plans for the future’, and discuss the ‘ins and outs of my contract.’ I know euphemisms when I hear them. That’s like when a mafia boss kisses you on both cheeks and tells you he’s always loved you. The piano wire and cement shoes can’t be too far away. So I could be getting the retirement of my dreams after all. And all it took was an unwholesome quantity of alcohol, and a heap of reckless abandon.

I wondered, though, exactly what evidence they might have, so I assembled the elves for a meeting. Gundal, my head elf, told me that on the night of his birthday I ordered thirty of the elves to trample ‘FUCK COCA COLA’ into one of the snow dunes, a message that has now frozen in fifty-foot-high letters. Not only that, but I made them pour thousands of vats of Coke into the trenches, which also froze, leaving a big brown message which apparently is visible from space.

Also, one of the elves got the pictures he took that night developed, and from the evidence it looks like I traveled way further than Glasgow on my drunken tour. This picture was taken in Bulgaria, and they say I was responsible for most of the painting. I believe them. Pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Santa’s Journal (Entry 3) – May 12 2013

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Spent most of the morning revising my ‘Naughty List’. Coca Cola told me I couldn’t use one anymore, that no child could be excluded from Santa’s services no matter how bad their behaviour. I’ve got the memo here somewhere. Ah, yes.

‘It is not your responsibility as one of our major brand representatives, nor the responsibility of Coca Cola itself, its subsidiaries or shareholders, to comment on or offer judgement upon the behaviour of individual customers or to create criteria under which customers could be excluded from our services based on arbitrary and often subjective codes of conduct. Coca Cola is a profit-driven company, and those profits, and indeed our brand, would suffer if we were to behave in this manner. Moral positions are best adopted and enforced by the church, and penalties best enforced through the legal system. It is not in our interests to attempt to fulfill the roles of either institution.’

So, roughly translated: ‘It doesn’t matter if some wee cunt’s put a brick through an old disabled woman’s window, doused her beloved pet-cat in paraffin, set it alight and then taken potshots at its screaming body with a pellet gun; so long as his parents are prepared to spend more money than they have in their bank accounts on Christmas presents, and continue to encourage their Hell-spawn to glug Coca Cola in quantities that would obliterate an elephant’s pancreas, then who gives a flying Yeti’s bawbag?’ I’m no legal eagle, but I do have a first-class honours degree in Reading Between the Lines, and a doctorate in Advanced Bullshit Detection.

Margaret took my blood-pressure again today. It’s high. My heart’s smacking around in my old chest like a jet-propelled pin-ball.

A photo of Snelling, reproduced in the interests of public safety. WARNING: he doesn’t normally look like Barry Cryer. He’s a master of disguise. BEWARE.

Anyway, Innis Snelling. He’s definitely top of the naughty list this year. I won’t go into too much detail and defile my memoirs with a record of his disgusting misdeeds, but suffice to say he got up to some sickening, sexual, banana-related ethnic tomfoolery. And what’s with the lad’s name? He sounds like a rejected Harry Potter villain. No toys for you, motherfucker.

Wee Gundal the elf’s birthday bash tonight. That should relax me.

 

 

Santa’s Journal (Entry 2) – May 11 2013

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Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch. I was walking back from the shop when it really struck me. Scrunch, scrunch. That noise, that sickening noise of boot on snow, like a rat gnawing through my skull. Snow. How much I hate it. White, endless white, it’s all the eye can see. I’d punch it if I thought it would make a blind bit of difference.

I’ve been thinking about it since yesterday. Escape. Screw the threat of legal action and the loss of pension. That’s what I should do, just escape. Get a hold of some false identities, shave off my beard, scoop up Margaret and then the pair of us bugger off to Barbados or somewhere equally sun-kist, to be collected by the Grim Reaper replete with burgeoning melanomas and livers gone wonky through one too many beach-front cocktails. Sounds like bliss to me. Fuck Christmas, fuck children and an extra-special fuck reserved for those sharp-suit wearing sons of dogs at Coca Cola.

I used to really enjoy my job, the status of being Santa – it used to really mean something. And the snow didn’t rankle so much when I felt like I was making a difference. Not now though. It was around the conclusion of the six-thousandth snowball fight that the malaise really kicked in, and shortly after the construction of the nine-thousand-and-fiftieth snowman. How I despise snowmen now. Now, at Christmas time, when I go on my deliveries, I take great delight in decapitating those I find in children’s gardens. Sometimes, with a hearty laugh, I sculpt sets of biologically intricate genitalia onto their icy bodies. The snowmen, that is. Not the children. To pass the long, bitter and freezing days here in the North Pole I’ve taken to erecting rows of snowmen, blindfolding them and mowing them down with an industrial strength hairdryer. Sometimes I douse them in petrol and set them alight. I swear that sometimes I can even hear them scream. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

Santa’s Journal (Entry 1) – May 10 2013

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I really want to retire, that’s the truth. But I won’t let those bastards at Coca Cola force me out. When I go, I’m going with my pension. So if they’re unhappy with my performance and general attitude to the work, and I’m unhappy being locked into this uninspiring life of snow and misery, then so be it. We’ll just have to be mutually unhappy; but happy that the lawyers too will be unhappy.

They are a shower of bastards, though, Coca Cola. I asked if I could relocate my North Pole base to the Southern hemisphere throughout the winter and spring months, but they said ‘no’. Gave me some shit about ‘brand coherence and continuity.’ So I’ve got to freeze my balls off like Nicholson in a hedge maze just in-case some kid breaks down in a heap cause they’ve seen Santa sauntering through Spain with a fucking Hawaiian shirt on. As if they’d recognise me. I even said I’d shave my beard, but, no, they said. ‘Your beard is the property of Coca Cola, Mr Claus.’

That’s why I’ve switched to drinking Pepsi. It’s not much, but it feels to me like the first strike of a guerrilla war. I can’t even change this coat, or deviate from the Coca Cola corporate colour scheme for fear of a law-suit. That’s definitely something I don’t want to be wearing. Every time I look down at the blood-red of my sleeve I feel more and more like I’m wearing a strait-jacket.

I remember when I used to be happy here. Where did it all go wrong?

 


Santa’s Journal – May 26 2012

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Another peaceful start to the day. This is unprecedented. It’s amazing what serenity a man can harvest when he bolts his door, deactivates his phone and decides to stop giving a fuck about every single living, breathing creature on the surface of the earth for a few days. It’s not all selfishness. Some of it’s self-protection. My heart’s been thumping like a back paw on a cat’s itchy back of late, and Herr Claus, my beloved Margaret, has ordered me to take it easy. Under pain of something unpleasant and as-of-yet unspecified. She’s hinted that much worse things than heart attacks can happen to a man. I’m hoping she isn’t referring to her stovies. Now that is a threat worth listening to. I’d rather eat uranium-garnished pig-poo whilst enduring twelve simultaneous heart attacks and a bonus rectal prolapse than suffer another single spoonful of that crunchy, former-flesh-mess she calls ‘a Tuesday Treat’. Silent ‘H’.

At least she’s good at cakes. You can tell that from my waistline. Mixed messages are being sent here, I fear.

‘Eat,’ she keeps saying, ‘A cake never hurt anybody.’

(‘Oh, hello, Dianne Beatties. Mrs Claus, have you met Dianne Beatties? Dianne Beatties, Mrs Claus, Mrs Claus, Dianne Beatties. Oh, hang on, there’s Sean Coronary and his wife.’)

Even though it was morning, I closed the heavy curtains in the living room and lay back in my armchair like I was a marshmallow bobbing in warm chocolate. Margaret lit the fire. which sent faint orange flickers dancing onto the wall. To delight the nostrils, the scent of freshly baked cake wafted in through the kitchen door, and the only sounds lulling between the four walls were the soft crackling-spit of the fire, and the gentle and steady tick-tocking of the clock. Heaven. My younger self would be appalled by this sentiment, but I wouldn’t trade in this level of comfort even for a shot at a queue-based blow-job from a platoon of the dirtiest, most wet-boobed and slutty war whores seen this side of Paisley.  Even if they were all thus guaranteed to be more sexually depraved than a drugged-up and recently evacuated Kerry Katona.

In any case, there’s very little life in Frank Junior these days. A lungless lady would have more luck inflating a wet balloon.

Anyway, enough cock-talk. I’m Santa Claus, for goodness sake!

In the afternoon I went off to greet Ronald. His private jet is actually shaped like the McDonald’s seagull motif. Well, I know it’s an ‘m’, or a set of golden arches to use the marketing parlance, but when that jet comes flying hard towards the ice, all curved, hump-backed and seagull-y, every single fish in the Arctic shits itself. And what a noise it makes as it approaches; what power it blasts from its engines. It whipped the snow off the ice like dandruff in a hurricane. A giant ‘m’ landing in your back garden, like the first vessel in the Alphabet Army’s invasion force.

I must admit it was good to see Ronald… well, initially… but more on that in the next journal entry. Something’s wrong with the clown. Bad wrong.