NEWSFLASH: SANTA DOES NOT EXIST

NEWSFLASH: SANTA DOES NOT EXIST

Author: Stephen DeVoy

NORTH POLE - For more than 100 years American children have been led to believe that a fat old elf riding a reindeer pulled sleigh makes an urgent trip each and every Christmas eve, depositing gifts down the chimneys of all good little girls and boys.  All superficial evidence supports the theory that Santa does exist: parents behave as though he exists, schools fail to address the issue as if it were a non issue, the media portrays Santa Claus as a real being, and even NORAD reports his trips on Christmas Eve.  Nevertheless, there are those CONSPIRACY THEORISTS out there who conjecture that Santa Claus is hyper-bogus with a bogosity of more than 1000 microLenats.  Derided as tinfoil hat wearing moonbats with a belief in black helicopters, these CONSPIRACY THEORISTS who doubt the existence of Santa Claus are called everything from "Grinches" to subversives.

In an effort to settle the question of whether or not Santa Claus exists once and for all, our crack team of private investigators has been probing into the Santa Question for more than a year now.  The following is a synopsis of our conclusions.

Santa is said to be the overlord of a village of enslaved elves living at the North Pole.  We sent a team to visit the North Pole to confirm the existence of Santa's Village.  Before we departed, we bought a map of the North Pole and were shocked to find that the North Pole lies smack-dab in the middle of an ocean.  "Perhaps there is a secret Island on the North Pole?" we thought.  Upon arriving at the North Pole we found an ice-sheet, completely vacant save a boatload of wealthy tourists visiting via a Russian ship.  The "moonbats" were correct, at least on this one: there is no Santa's Village at the North Pole.

If Santa's Village did not exit, we could not inspect the elf slave camps and their accompanying sweatshops.  At a loss for how to verify whether or not elves make Santa's presents, we sought the advice of someone with an IQ above 100 who suggested that we interview a random sample of children, ask to see their gifts, and look for the "made in" labels, counting just how many were made at the North Pole.  Another rather intelligent person suggested that we use that opportunity to gather information on the value of the gifts given to each specific child and then conduct an investigation into whether each specific child was naughty or nice.  If the children were not awarded such that there was a direct relationship between their position on the naughty-niceness scale and the value-of-gifts-for-that-child scale, then another of the major tenants of the Santa Theory would be disproved.

A random sample of 100,000 childen was selected and a crack team of 1000 volunteers was sent out to interview these children.  What we found amazed us.  First of all, not a single gift was "made in the North Pole."  Some where made in Canada, but Canada does not extend to the North Pole.  The vast majority were made in China where the Santa Legend is largely not believed.  Moreover, rather than being made by elves, we found that most toys were made by (a) slave prison-camp labor in China, (b) hyper-exploited sweatshop labor in Latin America, or (c) child labor in India.  No elves were found to be involved in the process of producing the toys.

We called each of the companies involved in the manufacture of the toys and all confirmed that Santa Claus was not a client.  Moreover, all manufactures made it absolutely clear that toys were only provided in exchange for cash or other monetary instruments.  Someone had to pay for those toys.  The question was, "Who?"

Our first clues about the source of the cash behind the toys came when we noticed an interesting correlation, one that had nothing to do with being naughty or nice.  Indeed, one might say that the naughtier children were more likely to receive the best gifts!  For example, we visited Tyrone Jackson, a young boy in Atlanta, Georgia whose father was unemployed and whose mother had died when he was two to show us last year's Christmas gifts.  With tears in his eyes, Tyrone explained that he had received no gifts the previous Christmas.  Tyrone seemed like a very nice boy.  He was polite and very grown up for his age.  We were not willing to believe without proof that Tyrone deserved a Christmas without toys so we asked his neighbors about him and they all praised him endlessly.  He took out the trash for the old lady in the apartment upstairs.  He helped other children with their homework.  He was very loved in his apartment building.  Next we went to his school to look at his school records and found he was no trouble what-so-ever.  Clearly, Tyrone was a very nice boy and he should have received Santa's nicest gifts, but he didn't!  This could be just an oversight on Santa's part, so we decided to look at how other children faired.

Thurston Williams of Boston, MA showed us a treasure trove of gifts he received the previous Christmas.  He went on and on about how he was such a great kid and how he deserved the toys he received, telling his sister to "shut the fuck up" when she interrupted him and asking our cameraman how it felt to be a "nigger?"  His neighbors said he threw rocks at their windows and his school reported that many complaints had been lodged against him for his arrogant behavior.  Here we had another counter example.  Thurston, a total-dick-wad, received the best gifts we had encountered but he was a very naughty boy.  We took a look at his parents' finances and found that he family was very wealthy.

We hypothesized that the quality and quantity of gifts given to any specific child were a function of the income of that child's parents.  Armed with this hypothesis, we re-tasked our crack team of investigators to look into the economic background of the family of each child investigated and what we found astounded us.  Indeed, our hypothesis was true, the quality and quantity of gifts received by any child were wholly a function of their family's income and not a function of the naughty vs. nice factor of the children involved.

Armed with this information, we kidnapped the parents of these children and subjected them to "special questioning."  Using truth-inducing drugs, each and every parent admitted that Santa was a hoax and that they actually went out and bought the gifts for their children, while lying and telling the children that Santa was for real!  This was the final straw: Santa did not exist!

When news of our coming publication of this story spread, we received numerous death threats from the owners of toy manufacturing plants, mall retail toy outlets, and even advertisers: all concerned that revealing the truth about Santa Claus would ruin their businesses.  We expected this, but what we did not expect was a visit by Homeland Security and another by the FBI.  We were threatened with declarations of "Enemy Combatant" and "indefinite detention in the Guantanamo Concentration Camp" if we came out with the story.  Bush himself summoned us to the White House and demanded that we not release this story.

George Bush explained it to us this way, he said, "Ya know, it is important to national security that 'Mericans grow up believing in lies.  We rely upon the ignorance of 'Mericans to protect the United States from foreign bogie-men!  If y'all tell the truth 'bout Santa, next thing we know Children will be callin' al-Qaeda fake too!"

Out of a knee-jerk sense of patriotism, we nearly caved in, but a prominent psychologist wrote us and urged us to go forward.  "For generations," he wrote, "Poor children have been deceived into thinking they are bad and rich children have been deceived into thinking they are good, all in the name of making money!  You've got to put an end to this!"

As journalists, we believe we have a duty to tell the truth so we have decided to publish this story anyway.  No doubt the agents of oppression will do their best to deride us as tinfoil wearing moonbats, but we can take it.  The truth is just too important!