8:31am Friday 13th November 2009
By David Barnett
For any children reading this – and if there are, what are you doing reading the random outpourings of an old duffer like myself? Haven’t you got a bus station to go and smoke behind? – I want to make something abundantly clear from the outset.
Father Christmas – or Santa Claus if you are either American or posh – provides all presents on the morning of December 25. The presents are manufactured by a workforce of elves at his North Pole headquarters, and are a highly-motivated and skilled body of fantastical beings who have enviable working conditions and pay, and rarely get involved in industrial disputes.
Well, there was that time when one of the lads from the toy train section was caught in a compromising position with a young lass from the doll department, but you have to understand that he was a goblin and they often can’t be trusted.
Due to various grown-up things like tax and commercial legislation in several of the countries he operates in, Father Christmas has to work in some slightly subtle ways sometimes.
For example, if you catch your parent or guardian on the internet looking at toys, then don’t fret. Father Christmas has a number of companies that are mere fronts for his multi-national conglomerate, such as Toys R Us and Amazon. Parents who want particular toys for their children at Christmas have to put orders in via these sorts of places. It’s all perfectly normal.
And it all runs pretty well. Except sometimes, grown-ups can be awfully silly. The embers have barely cooled on the bonfires when the Christmas fever starts, and some idiot starts talking about ‘must-have’ Christmas toys in November.
And, guess what? Before you know it, these ‘must-have’ Christmas toys have caught the elves at the North Pole completely on the hop, and they haven’t made enough to cope with all the orders that mums and dads are putting in via the secret websites.
And then mums and dads start to get a bit naughty. They fight in shops and try to sell these toys at highly-inflated prices to parents who are worried that the elves won’t make enough.
This year the must-have toy is, bizarrely, a battery-powered hamster. The sort of thing you might have paid a quid for in order to amuse your cat. I have it on good authority that the elves at the North Pole are working overtime to meet demand.
In the meantime, though, if any of you boys and girls sees a shop selling these little hamsters, do drop me a line, will you? It’s only to help Father Christmas out a bit this year. Honest.
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