The Fraud of Satan Claus

Santa is a great salesman.  He is a public relations spokesman for capitalism, and the first politician and influencer that human children are exposed to as they grow up.  This is the critical age when all children learn the very important message: “only through presents and products can a human being ever reach happiness”. 

By contrast, children that do not get presents are supposed to be unhappy children, even though they may have loving parents.  If a child has no presents, it means that it was either a bad child or had bad parents.  Santa Claus teaches us the very important lesson that without presents, there is no love. Without capitalism, we are not allowed to feel our feelings.

Santa is very friendly and will have many product recommendations for you, but you have to understand that he is one busy man.  He doesn’t get on his reindeer sleigh for nothing.  There is commission to be made, which comes from Santa’s main employer, global capital.  He pretends to share this commission with his elves: made-up creatures that are as fake as Santa himself. The real beneficiaries of Christmas are multinational corporations. Touching. 

The real Christmas elves are actually humans that usually reside over in Asia, where they are busy round the clock making toys.  Many of Santa’s real elves are actually children.  These are the bad children that did not deserve any toys and instead have to make toys for the good children, with very little compensation and terrible working conditions.

Santa doesn’t have reindeer anymore, ever since they became an endangered species.  Instead, the toys are put on big super tanker container ships that run on fossil fuel and roam the world.  By the time they’ve reached their destination the toys have amassed so much carbon footprint and violated so many animal and human rights, but this is just the price we must all pay for “love”.  It is all worth it, as at least some of the children on Earth get to have presents. 

The bad children are also sometimes lucky.  This is because the good children throw away most of their presents, which are then shipped to third world countries as garbage.  There, the bad children can walk through burning mountains of garbage and occasionally find a good toy.  They must be careful though not to breathe in the carcinogenic fumes, as they will die before they reach adulthood. Eventually there are too many fumes, and both the good and the bad children breathe them in, as well as the next generation of children.  But love is still there, and so are the toy sweatshops, and most importantly, Santa gets to keep his job for another year.

George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist.

Follow me on Bluesky @tsakraklides.bsky.social

Discover my Books Here

Note to my readers: I keep my site FREE because it’s not right to paywall existentially important content during an existential crisis.  But if you appreciate any of the work I’ve done over the years, please consider joining as a paid subscriber so it can continue!  I have minimal overheads, no sponsors to sell myself to, bosses who tell me what to write, or staff I have to pay.  It’s just me.  This freedom does mean though that your support is vital. Thank you so much.