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NEWSFLASH: SANTA DOES NOT EXIST
by Stephen DeVoy
Saturday, Dec. 24, 2005 at 7:21 AM
Santa is a hoax!
NEWSFLASH: SANTA DOES NOT EXIST
Author: Stephen DeVoy
NORTH POLE - For more than 100 years American
children have been led to believe that a fat old elf riding a reindeer pulled
sleigh makes an urgent trip each and every Christmas eve, depositing gifts down
the chimneys of all good little girls and boys. All superficial evidence
supports the theory that Santa does exist: parents behave as though he exists,
schools fail to address the issue as if it were a non issue, the media portrays
Santa Claus as a real being, and even NORAD reports his trips on Christmas
Eve. Nevertheless, there are those CONSPIRACY THEORISTS out there who
conjecture that Santa Claus is hyper-bogus with a bogosity
of more than 1000 microLenats.
Derided as tinfoil hat wearing moonbats with a belief in black helicopters,
these CONSPIRACY THEORISTS who doubt the existence of Santa Claus are called
everything from "Grinches" to subversives.
In an effort to settle the question of whether or not
Santa Claus exists once and for all, our crack team of private investigators has
been probing into the Santa Question for more than a year now. The
following is a synopsis of our conclusions.
 Santa
is said to be the overlord of a village of enslaved elves living at the North
Pole. We sent a team to visit the North Pole to confirm the existence of
Santa's Village. Before we departed, we bought a map
of the North Pole and were shocked to find that the North Pole lies smack-dab in
the middle of an ocean. "Perhaps there is a secret Island on the
North Pole?" we thought. Upon arriving at the North Pole we found an
ice-sheet, completely vacant save a boatload of wealthy tourists visiting via a
Russian ship. The "moonbats" were correct, at least on this one:
there is no Santa's Village at the North Pole.
If Santa's Village did not exit, we could not inspect
the elf slave camps and their accompanying sweatshops. At a loss for how
to verify whether or not elves make Santa's presents, we sought the advice of
someone with an IQ above 100 who suggested that we interview a random sample of
children, ask to see their gifts, and look for the "made in" labels,
counting just how many were made at the North Pole. Another rather
intelligent person suggested that we use that opportunity to gather information
on the value of the gifts given to each specific child and then conduct an
investigation into whether each specific child was naughty or nice. If the
children were not awarded such that there was a direct relationship between
their position on the naughty-niceness scale and the
value-of-gifts-for-that-child scale, then another of the major tenants of the
Santa Theory would be disproved.
A random sample of 100,000 childen was selected and a
crack team of 1000 volunteers was sent out to interview these children.
What we found amazed us. First of all, not a single gift was "made in
the North Pole." Some where made in Canada, but Canada does not
extend to the North Pole. The vast majority were made in China where the
Santa Legend is largely not believed. Moreover, rather than being made by
elves, we found that most toys were made by (a) slave prison-camp labor in
China, (b) hyper-exploited sweatshop labor in Latin America, or (c) child labor
in India. No elves were found to be involved in the process of producing
the toys.
We called each of the companies involved in the
manufacture of the toys and all confirmed that Santa Claus was not a
client. Moreover, all manufactures made it absolutely clear that toys were
only provided in exchange for cash or other monetary instruments. Someone
had to pay for those toys. The question was, "Who?"
Our first clues about the source of the cash behind
the toys came when we noticed an interesting correlation, one that had nothing
to do with being naughty or nice. Indeed, one might say that the naughtier
children were more likely to receive the best gifts! For example, we
visited Tyrone Jackson, a young boy in Atlanta, Georgia whose father was
unemployed and whose mother had died when he was two to show us last year's
Christmas gifts. With tears in his eyes, Tyrone explained that he had
received no gifts the previous Christmas. Tyrone seemed like a very nice
boy. He was polite and very grown up for his age. We were not
willing to believe without proof that Tyrone deserved a Christmas without toys
so we asked his neighbors about him and they all praised him endlessly. He
took out the trash for the old lady in the apartment upstairs. He helped
other children with their homework. He was very loved in his apartment
building. Next we went to his school to look at his school records and
found he was no trouble what-so-ever. Clearly, Tyrone was a very nice boy
and he should have received Santa's nicest gifts, but he didn't! This
could be just an oversight on Santa's part, so we decided to look at how other
children faired.
Thurston Williams of Boston, MA showed us a treasure
trove of gifts he received the previous Christmas. He went on and on about
how he was such a great kid and how he deserved the toys he received, telling
his sister to "shut the fuck up" when she interrupted him and asking
our cameraman how it felt to be a "nigger?" His neighbors said
he threw rocks at their windows and his school reported that many complaints had
been lodged against him for his arrogant behavior. Here we had another
counter example. Thurston, a total-dick-wad, received the best gifts we
had encountered but he was a very naughty boy. We took a look at his
parents' finances and found that he family was very wealthy.
We hypothesized that the quality and quantity of
gifts given to any specific child were a function of the income of that child's
parents. Armed with this hypothesis, we re-tasked our crack team of
investigators to look into the economic background of the family of each child
investigated and what we found astounded us. Indeed, our hypothesis was
true, the quality and quantity of gifts received by any child were wholly a
function of their family's income and not a function of the naughty vs. nice
factor of the children involved.
Armed with this information, we kidnapped the parents
of these children and subjected them to "special questioning."
Using truth-inducing drugs, each and every parent admitted that Santa was a hoax
and that they actually went out and bought the gifts for their children, while
lying and telling the children that Santa was for real! This was the final
straw: Santa did not exist!
When news of our coming publication of this story
spread, we received numerous death threats from the owners of toy manufacturing
plants, mall retail toy outlets, and even advertisers: all concerned that
revealing the truth about Santa Claus would ruin their businesses. We
expected this, but what we did not expect was a visit by Homeland Security and
another by the FBI. We were threatened with declarations of "Enemy
Combatant" and "indefinite detention in the Guantanamo Concentration
Camp" if we came out with the story. Bush himself summoned us to the
White House and demanded that we not release this story.
George Bush explained it to us this way, he said,
"Ya know, it is important to national security that 'Mericans grow up
believing in lies. We rely upon the ignorance of 'Mericans to protect the
United States from foreign bogie-men! If y'all tell the truth 'bout Santa,
next thing we know Children will be callin' al-Qaeda fake too!"
Out of a knee-jerk sense of patriotism, we nearly
caved in, but a prominent psychologist wrote us and urged us to go
forward. "For generations," he wrote, "Poor children have
been deceived into thinking they are bad and rich children have been deceived
into thinking they are good, all in the name of making money! You've got
to put an end to this!"
As journalists, we believe we have a duty to tell the
truth so we have decided to publish this story anyway. No doubt the agents
of oppression will do their best to deride us as tinfoil wearing moonbats, but
we can take it. The truth is just too important!
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