It’s that time of year when ongoing contractual duties mean Santa Claus is out of hibernation. And he has to write a weekly column for us detailing the build-up to Christmas. Brace yourselves (in a “good” way, naturally).

The Thaw

Ho ho ho. My new head elf, Vincent, woke me from hibernation yesterday. Life in the North Pole is cold so he had to thaw out my frozen limbs with a flamethrower.

Once I, Santa, and my wife, Mrs. Santa, and our elf employees (plus the reindeer… Christ, I almost forget about those vile bastards) emerge from hibernation we have to get the factory shipshape.

Otherwise the girls and boys won’t get any toys. And then we’ll be sued. I’m not letting that happen again!

Melt It (with flamethrowers)

With stalactites and stalagmites everywhere around, years ago I realised the best business practice is to crank up the central heating and break out the flamethrowers.

The problem there is all the melting ice creates a sort of greenhouse effect and there’s a mass flooding. In previous years I got my elves to siphon the mass of water off into the drainage systems and out the front door.

Due to last year’s various calamities, I only have 67 elves left. I started the Christmas run in 2018 with 456.

The rest are all now dead or comatose, which means a qualitative deficit of severe productivity issues for the 2019 X Mas run (I took some business classes post-Chrimbo ’18).

That means as we thawed out all that ice our drainage techniques were sadly lacking due to lacking the lack of elf power.

So a mini-tsunami was sent engulfing all of us as we went about with our flamethrowers. Elves being small, obliteration was inevitable – we lost 10 immediately.

Our ex-convict janitor, meanwhile, was swept out of the front door whilst screaming sweet bloody murder. CCTV footage appears to indicate he was bellowing, “YOU FACKIN’ FAT BASTARD!!” Which I presume is a slur against me. That is slander. I will be taking him to court… if he’s still alive.

He was ditched into the freezing cold ocean that’s all of a sudden appeared beside the factory. We were all, like, WTF!? That wasn’t there before!

Further woe, as due to climate change my factory is now on the precipice of the Arctic Ocean. So much of the ice that was there has buggered off – melted – which is a crisis in the making. Are we set to plunge helplessly into that lot?

Whatever, our convict janitor froze into a solid block and sunk into the murky waters. We won’t be seeing him again. Just as well, for his sake, as I almost always win slander cases!

Anyway, Mrs. Santa Claus went cannoning on a wave of melted ice into the kitchen. Good. Because that’s where women belong!

I was fortunate as my enormous gut and hefty weight makes me a largely immovable object.

The wave merely deflected around my bulbous stomach, with the wake knocking over several more elves. I felt that defined their putrid existence as working class scumbags, overwhelmed by my capitalistic fat cat might!

Other incidents weren’t so laden in social commentary. The reindeer went unscathed as their hut is outside.

But the factory cook, Doreen, viewed Mrs. Santa Claus’ sudden arrival into the kitchen as a threat to her job. She began attacking her with a ladle, but my wife was able to punch her in the jaw. The chef collapsed in a heap and is now in a coma.

As Doreen also doubles up as our nurse, the various injuries at present will have to remain untreated.

This is bad news as I eventually found Vincent – my head elf – impaled on a plastic Christmas tree. He’s still alive, he just has the thing protruding from his gut. He seemed a bit upset about that, but I smacked him around the head and told him to snap out of it.

Clean Up Operation

As we cleared up the corpses, seeing him bobbing about with the Christmas tree protruding outward filled me with a sense of, “spirit of the season.”

Overcome with festive joy, I staggered (as my gout is really bad this year) to my quarters to blast Slade’s “Merry Christmas Everybody” at full volume. I got a bottle of whiskey from my cupboard and went back out into the fray to chug on that.

The remaining elves looked pretty shellshocked, so as the music soared I bellowed at them to get into the Christmas spirit. Many of them started crying, so I got my shotgun and started firing it wildly into the air to enforce a positive outlook.

All told, I’m down to 20 elves. My janitor is dead, Doreen is unconscious, and a supply of instant noodles was demolished. This is the main food source for most of us, so we’re lacking supplies.

As such, we begin the push for Christmas 2019 in a state of extreme survival. I’ve got my remaining elves watching episodes of Bear Grylls whilst I’m drinking as much alcohol as possible.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer called in emergency services, so we’ll see how that goes.

But keep sending in your Christmas requests, kids! Santa hasn’t missed a year yet! As I’m contractually obliged to inform you all, “ho ho ho”.

New Christmas Song

On a different note, in a drunken stupour I wrote a new Christmas hit single: “Santa’s Big Sack of Delights”. My wife says it has disturbing connotations. I told her to fuck off.

It’s about Santa (me) and the sack of delights I have on Christmas eve/day. Here are the lyrics:

Some say Santa is a sack of shit/I say they're delusional/Ho ho ho/My sack of delights isn't full of woe/You bastards. [Repeat x 20]

It’s set to a gangsta rap beat as I’m hoping to tap into the youth culture. They like that crap music, so this thing should earn me some extra money.

That’ll help the recruitment spree just around the corner. Between me and you, there’s no way Christmas is happening unless I get new employees in.

And feel free to apply! We need anyone who can breathe to get this thing done. Heard of casualties of war? This is Christmas of war. It’s a goddamn war zone here.

But there is occasional Christmas cheer, in amongst the blood splattering walls and screams of mental and physical anguish.