'Twas the night before Christmas, and up in the North,
The man they call Santa, he rocked back and forth.
His senile, angry impatience was clear,
He hadn't delivered a present in years.
His workshop was silent, his wife was long gone,
And everyone, everywhere, but him, was wrong.
The children were losers, he said to himself,
As he gorged on his cookies, mistreated his elfs.
The climate was changing, society too,
But Santa refused to believe it was true.
His sanity failed and he wailed in the snow,
while the ungrateful bastards debated below.
After all that he'd given and all that he'd done,
It appeared that his battle would never be won.
But he'd never give in and he'd never admit,
That his self-proclaimed throne was a small mound of shit.
It had been a long and solitary three years—even more secluded than what old Kris Kringle was accustomed to on his icy perch at the northernmost tip of the world.
In fact, it had been almost exactly three years, on this particular Christmas Eve night, since that damning report from NASA pinning the blame for catastrophic climate change solely on Santa and the methane emissions from his massive, sprawling, hideously unethical reindeer farm.
And though he threw his recently purchased phone in the fire that fateful night three years back, it wasn't long until Santa ordered his elves to construct him a new one.
Social media is addictive, he soon learned, and the best way for him to speak directly to the earthly public.
And so, rather than plot his annual route around the globe delivering presents to the children, Santa now spent his time tweeting—all his time tweeting.
He tweeted from the toilet, from his bed, and from the fireside.
He tweeted at all hours of the day and night, while neglecting his present-bearing duties.
The character-restrained diatribes all followed a similar script, denouncing his various enemies and creating his own narrative truth.
"The FAKE NEWS media wants you to believe I did the climate change, but in fact they are all CORRUPT and, frankly, embarrassing. Sad!"
And:
"If global warming is real, why is it snowing in the North Pole right now? FAKE NEWS #Santa2020 #MakeChristmasGreatAgain"
Also:
"If the #FakeNews media had any decency, they would admit that reindeer farts are actually good for the environment, and also the economy! NO COLLUSION!"
Global warming, Santa declared, was not a scientific fact—it was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese government, in conjunction with the Easter Bunny.
But despite his angry, online ramblings, the entire world saw what Santa could not—that he was nothing more than a sad, tired old man, well past whatever prime he may have once enjoyed, mad with imagined power on an icy, isolated throne, far removed from reality.
And now the knives had come out.
The world had heard enough.
Santa's impeachment hearings had begun.
The impeachment of Kris Kringle
The media coverage was wall-to-wall, and the evidence was damning.
As it turns out, Santa was, for lack of a better phrase, a real piece of shit.
One by one, the witnesses gave their testimonies, as the world watched on in awe and horror.
"Go ahead, little Timmy, tell us what you saw," the stern and intimidating leader of the impeachment hearings said on Day 4.
The assembled audience gasped and sighed, clasped their hands and clenched their teeth as Timmy laid it all out.
Breaking and entering, invasion of privacy, indecent exposure—Timmy's testimony covered all of Santa's misdeeds, carried out on an annual basis.
If little Timmy were to be believed, Santa was indeed a real piece of shit.
Santa wasted no time in attacking little Timmy's character on Twitter.
"Everywhere little Timmy went turned bad. He started off in his bedroom, how did that go?" Santa tweeted, referring to a rumored bed-wetting incident involving Timmy and his Fortnite bedspread.
"It is Santa's absolute right to deny presents."
For centuries, the mythical man was a beacon of truth, wisdom and youthful innocence untouched by the banalities of common bickering and judgment.
But the world was changing faster than ever before, and truth was now seemingly in the absolute eye of the beholder. Facts—or whichever alternative facts one chose to believe on any given day—were subjective.
All that mattered was what you believed in your heart, was Santa's argument.
And, in the end, the public ate it up.
For when it came down to it, it was far easier to simply create your own truth—to decide on your belief first, and callously form the facts around it afterward—than to think critically, deduct incisively, change your behaviours and sacrifice accordingly for the greater good.
Santa knew this.
And for that reason, Santa knew he would win.
An avalanche of Snowflakes
Back in the North Pole, in front of his roaring fire, Santa groaned satisfactorily into his easy chair, knowing that he had been fully exonerated, at least in the eyes of his most fervent supporters.
But then, they were never going to desert his side, were they?
For his truth was their truth—that the old ways were good ways, and traditions should never, ever change, no matter who was offended or hurt in employing them.
The dissenters were nothing but snowflakes, he knew—fragile and temporary, while crying out that they were unique and deserving of special attention.
He took a gigantic, gluttonous swig of milk, and ordered his nearest elf to bring him a tray of his finest cookies.
Then he picked up his phone, and set to tweeting.
His poetry, so eloquent and ephemeral in years past, had fallen by the wayside.
Everything was temporary now.
But even as he stared into his screen, fat, red thumbs tapping out angry nonsense and personal attacks, the world continued to change around him—unbeknownst to Ol' Saint Nick himself, and well beyond his own feeble, failing control.
As he tapped, the snowflakes he so derided piled up outside his door.
And before long, he would be buried.
To read Part 1 of this heartwarming Christmas tale, see "Time for Christmas tales," Pique, Dec. 25, 2016: piquenewsmagazine.com/whistler/time-for-christmas-tales/Content?oid=2873421.
Braden Dupuis is Pique's senior reporter and wearer of obnoxious Christmas sweaters.
