Santa Claus: Overworked and Underpaid, Just Like Everybody Else
It was the night before Christmas and Santa Claus was attempting to swallow down his headache medication when Charity, Mrs. Claus, threw down folded papers in front of his face.
“I want a divorce,” she said simply, looking him right in the eyes before she forced a pleasant smile and her lips curved, “and dinner will be ready in five minutes, darling, so wash your hands.”
He glanced down at the papers that were now covering the bills that he had been going over. Divorce papers, just what he needed on top of everything else that was going on. Santa had been going over the property taxes that he had been issued this year. Every year, because he lived in the North Pole, countries all around the world threw straws to see who had the pleasure of taking Santa’s money. The lucky winner was the United States. Of course, they were overcharging him, when he compared the figures to what he had to pay last year (about 17.32% more what he had to pay Denmark).
Feeling tired, Santa put the divorce papers in his ‘IN BOX’ to look at later, on top of letters from good (and bad) boys and girls from all around the world. He had other things to deal with. The stock in his company, SNTC, had dropped by three points over the last month and then there was his chain of toy factories. Santa’s Workshop Incorporated had to lay off another thousand elves at one of the branches in India just before the Christmas rush because of that drop of stock points. It was because people were starting to think that he was a gimmick, something thought up by Hallmark to generate sales during December. But they were wrong.
Just because Santa delegated his tasks because the world’s population increased by so much over the years, people thought he was a fake. After all, how could a jolly man fly around in a sleigh pulled by reindeer and manage to get presents to all the good boys and girls in one night?
Well he was no longer ‘jolly’ after Charity had him go onto a weight watching program and he ended up dropping about fifty pounds (despite having sneaked cookies and milk so many times). But that didn’t mean that he was a fake! Other CEOs of major companies were allowed to delegate their tasks among other administrators, but no, Santa Claus wasn’t allowed to do that. And he certainly wasn’t allowed to have stand-ins deliver presents in specific countries.
Had anyone else ever tried to fly around the world in a night after all the stricter laws had come into play? Under international law, he was required to check in to every country and submit to a drug test and a breathalyzer as well as wait for someone from customs to check all the presents with the use of machines and drug-sniffing dogs. Santa wasn’t trusted anymore, it seemed, and that was evident whenever someone shone a flashlight in his eyes and demanded to know if he was flying drunk that night.
This was one of the main reasons that prompted Santa to hire stand-ins that would have access to their own set of nine reindeer, a sleigh and a specific Santa’s Workshop Incorporated factory working for them.
Sighing, Santa groaned when he heard the familiar cheerful jingle of his cell phone playing ‘Deck the Halls’. Picking up his phone, he checked the caller ID and saw that it read The American Santa. Deciding between sitting down at the dinner table with Charity while she listed off reasons why she hated him, Santa decided to take the call.
“Hey Santa,” the oh-so-familiar voice of the American Santa assaulted his ears, “I want a pay raise.”
There was no ‘how are you?’ or ‘how’s Mrs. Claus doing?’ it was just straight to the point. The American Santa wanted a pay raise.
“Nick, you know that I don’t go over pay cheques until after Christmas,” Santa began, feeling as if he had given this speech to all of them many times already.
There was a snort from over the phone.
“That’s fine, if you feel that way, Santa. I’m going to be calling the New York Times after I hang up on you and giving them the exclusive: Santa Claus Delegates Underpaid Stand-Ins, Owns Toy Factories in India and Enslaves Elves!”
Then Nick, the American Santa, hung up the phone.
Groping around his desk, trying to feel for his bottle of pills, Santa felt a migraine coming on and then felt the bottle underneath a letter from a four year old named Emily that was asking for a rocking horse. Jerking the bottle up and opening it with shaky movements, Santa wondered who exactly was the one with the bright idea to childproof caps for pill bottles as he shook a pill out and swallowed it down, chasing it with a gulp of coffee.
With a sigh of relief, he put his mug down and then stood up to go for dinner when the mug tipped over and spilled coffee all over the master copy of the Naughty or Nice List.
Cursing out loud, Santa picked up his phone to call his head Santa Stand-In.
“Hey George, I’m canceling Christmas this year. Put it out in a bulletin for me, would you? Umm.. ‘11:37pm on Christmas Eve, Santa Claus calls off Christmas, he reminds people to go shopping on December the 26th and to prepare for the next year’ and then add in some great lines of how I’m off recuperating from a family tragedy. Thanks buddy, I’ll call you sometime next week,” Santa said cheerfully into the phone.
With a chuckle, Santa picked up his jacket from the back of his chair and put it up onto the coat rack. He picked up his hat and put it onto a peg. He was wondering to himself if he could counter his wife’s petition for divorce with one of his own and retain all the assets that he had built up over the years.
“Charity! What’s for dinner?” Santa called out as he started down the hall. It was great. It was the night before Christmas, the holidays were cancelled, he could go shopping and just spend a day playing with the reindeer. Life was good this year.
Written December 21 2006.