Hurray! It’s that time of year again when Father Christmas writes a weekly column in the build-up to Christmas Day. Are you excited, kids!?

Not wishing to start on a downer, but this opening column from Santa isn’t overly cheerful. It’s unremittingly bleak, to be honest, but hopefully he’ll be less hungover for his next one.

Bins, Begging, Bargain Booze, and Bellowing

Ho, ho, ho, everybody, as I’m contractually obliged to say at least 10 times a year to make it look like I actually give a toss about Christmas.

Which I don’t, I tell you right now! Because this whole “Father Christmas” crap has been weighing on me heavily for many decades now and I think I’m getting a bit jaded and sick to bloody death of the whole bollocks.

But… it’s time to fire up the factory again and get the elves to process all the presents those spoilt little brats the world over want.

Yesterday my head elf, Markus, reported for duty by rousing me in my quarters.

To put it mildly, during the off period, I’ve been going pretty mental hitting the sauce. I normally hibernate pre-Christmas, but got up early in September to tear it up a notch in the local towns of the North Pole.

Needless to say, I’ve made a menace of myself in local communities by:

• Begging locals for loose change. In return I offered to show them my flabby beer belly, but this merely disgusted most locals. Goddamn snowflakes.
• Bellowing obscenities at anyone within ear reach.
• Sleeping in bins next to bargain booze shops.
• Ram raiding bargain booze shops.
• Drunkenly attacking strangers, scaling bargain booze shops, and sleeping in any bin I could come across.
• Drunkenly dawdling (to the extent it was classed a “public nuisance”).

Anyway, back at the factory after another bender, when Markus was rousing me I was so hungover I punched him in the face and then stomped on his big pointy ears with my feet.

He was really upset about that and immediately quit, saying he couldn’t handle another year of this “mental and physical torture.” Bastard! Well, I showed the little bastard what for and chased him out of the factory whilst firing my shotgun at him.

I managed to clip him on his right hip and he flipped his middle finger at me.

That really, REALLY got to me and I saw redder than red. So I had the bazooka out over that and was chasing Markus out over the icy plain, firing off rockets, the pair of us skidding about the place in the subzero temperatures.

I’m sad to report that Markus survived and I believe he’s planning to setup a digital marketing business in the South Pole.

I wish him all the worst and that a plague or hives and gangrene will curse his every waking moment from now until the day he DIES HORRIBLY from the aforementioned plague of hives and gangrene!

We’re Hiring More Elves (NOT!)

Urgh! These STUPID little elf bastards!

My “employees”! The elves make my toys but, I have to say, the general issue with them over the years has been how destructible they all are.

Cheap labour, sure, but otherwise a real problem. Here are my main issues:

• Their fleshy bodies aren’t robust enough to deal with gunshots, heavy implements landing on them, and explosions. As such, their relentless deaths have been a continuous annoyance for me.
• They’re hard working, but only to a certain extent (i.e. until they die due to malnutrition or heavy implements landing on them).
  • For example, this was particularly the case with the Santa Anvil Incident in 1989, which wiped out 3,000 elves after 20 tonnes of anvils broke through the roof above their sleeping quarters.
  • The next year I had only 10 tonnes in there, but the repaired roof collapsed again obliterating a further 1,000 elves. I later moved their sleeping quarters nearer to the cesspit for convenience and to avoid further crushing incidents.
• Their high-pitched voices are bloody annoying when I’m hangover. And because I’m usually hungover all of the time, that means the little buggers really, really annoy me.

The harsh reality is I only have 12 elves left alive from Christmas 2020, so I need to go on a hiring spree. And if there’s one thing I hate, it’s hiring people!

And so considering I have to hire going on 1,500 of the elves… I thought to myself, “WHY BLOODY WELL SHOULD I, YOU WITCH!?”

Yes, so I didn’t think that. I actually bellowed it at my wife in a drunken rage.

But I’ve got a bloody valid point here, right, because I’m not sure I can be bothered with Christmas this year. And so I decided to cop out of it. So, I quit my Santa job and went on an epic bender.

My wife later reported I locked myself in my office with the tannoy system, where I stayed until I passed out roaring abuse across the factory. Some of my quips included:

• “To HELL With Christmas!”
• “Christmas is DEAD!”
• “OH, BLOODY HELL, MY GOUT IS SWEET BLOODY MURDER!”
• “I hate all of you a great deal, but it’s my WIFE whom I hate the MOST I assure you!”

All of that invective was interspersed with bouts of fitful sobbing, slobbering, and demands for three days of international mourning due to my resignation.

*Gritted Teeth* Christmas 2021 is Happening After All

After that drunken display, Rudolph was woken by me and finally emerged from his hibernation. My wife had a word with him and he decided to straighten me out.

We have a strained relationship (well… I do with everyone, really). It’s common for Rudolph to ram his antlers up my backside during our furious arguments.

On this occasion he smashed the door down with the other reindeer and they all charged me.

Naturally, I was incredibly naked at the time, covered in puke, and swigging straight from an absinthe bottle. I bellowed at them, “BRING IT ON, YOU FURRY BASTARDS!” but was too drunk to aim my bazooka properly.

As such, the bazooka went off by simply detonated a huge hole into the the side of my office. So that’ll need repairing.

The reindeer pounced on me and took me off to the infirmary, where our new nurse (Doreen) loaded me up with diazepam and a shot of cortisone.

That lot calmed me down a bit and I went off to flirt with my wife.

I do get a charm offensive on sometimes! I apologised for my earlier antics and have taken back my role as Santa, this time with a well deserved $40,000 pay rise.

That’ll come out of the elf wage budget, but so what? If they’re poor, they should work harder.