By Laurie Baron
NORTH POLE― Unbeknownst to the public, this Christmas was Santa’s last. The rotund elderly man realizes he can no longer compete with modern technology and world capitalism. He is eager to slow down and collect Social Security and Medicare. The reindeer and sleigh are quaint, but way too slow and small compared to drones, jumbo jets, trucks, and, trains. Moreover, the protracted drought afflicting wide stretches of the earth has caused the cost of hay to skyrocket. Inflation also stems from rising salary and health care costs demanded by his unionized workforce of elves, the Amalgamated Tiny Toymakers. The price of oil to heat his sprawling workshop and the cost to modernize its outdated infrastructure mean that gifts produced by it are no longer affordable to the mass of humanity.
Santa faces tough choices: automate and downsize or outsource to places that are more business friendly like China, India, or right-to-work states like Wisconsin. Consequently, he will issue pink slips to the elves and hope they will qualify for unemployment insurance and food stamps before the North Pole files for bankruptcy and cuts these programs. Apple and Walmart will locate mega-factories at the former workshop site and hire back some of the elves at lower wages and with less benefits. Santa will agree to provide the new companies with his customer list compiled by the NSA which monitors the world’s children to check who has been naughty or nice, but this arrangement might be short term because there are rumors that Frosty’s rogue son Edward Snowman has leaked that secret database to the press to protect their privacy.
Santa also fears that the ice beneath his compound is thinning due to global warming, but is too honest to conceal this danger from its future owners. If Santa does not like retirement, he’ll look for a holiday job that requires more than one day for giving presents: Chanukah, Kwanzaa, or Ramadan are in the running, but don’t tell anyone: Santa doesn’t want to get arrested for insider trading.
*
Baron is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He may be contacted via lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com