Santa Ditches Naughty and Nice List In Favour of More ‘Woke’ Approach

I was dreading this meeting. Being the personal assistant to the big guy was fine from January to November—December was hell.

It wasn’t always this way. Not so long ago, things worked like a well-oiled machine around here. The naughty and nice lists populated themselves throughout the year, the good kids got their toys, and the bad kids got coal.

But then, somewhere on or around 2010, we noticed something starting to shift. In place of letters from the kids promising to be on their very best behaviour followed by their Christmas wish lists, we started to get mail from the parents.

At first, he was open to the feedback, you know? Times they are a changing and all that.

But this year, they finally took it a step too far.

He received a petition. Somehow they broke through the firewall, and change.org managed to get the thing delivered straight to his inbox. The one that only me and Mrs C are meant to have access to. The message was crystal clear— They wanted him cancelled. Not Christmas, but the man in red himself.

I’d tried, stupidly, to delete it before he saw. But I was too late.

-

“What do they mean they want me ‘cancelled'? And what in the north pole is ‘woke’?!” he screamed at me from behind his brandy and cigar.

“Um…” I hesitated, “It seems that because you’re still doing the whole naughty and nice list thing, they want to cancel you. Apparently, it’s too black and white. Kids can’t just be labelled as ‘naughty or nice’ these days—there are too many other variables. And they also found the tweets….”

“What tweets?” he questioned, his curious eyes staring at me from over his half-moon spectacles as he took a long, slow drag from his cigar.

“From Christmas 2018. Remember when Suri got caught with that uh… substance in her backpack, and she ended up on the naughty list? And then her Dad bought her that mountain bike and wrote your name on the gift-tag?”

“Yeah, so?”

“You said it didn’t matter how much of a top gun he thought he was; you were the real maverick when it came to Christmas, and he better watch his back. Then you said that naughty rich kids should think themselves lucky they even get the lump of coal, in third world countries those kids would kill for a lump of coal to throw on the fire, which is why when you visit those countries, you give them just that, whether they’re naughty or nice.”

“But I apologised!”

“Doesn’t matter. They don’t care about that. That’s why they love the internet, they can always dig up something to help them on their cancel crusade, and unfortunately, sir, this year you’re on their list.”

-

That was almost a week ago. He’d spent the last five days holed up in his office, thinking about his next move. I had no idea what I was about to walk into.

I wrapped my knuckles on the door three times before letting myself in.

He was perched at his desk, casually leaning back in his chair, puffing away on another cigar. I’d noticed he’d swapped his brandy for whiskey… that wasn’t a good sign.

He leant forward and slid a piece of paper across the desk.

“I want you to issue that to the workers.” was all he said before waving his hand in a dismissive motion.

My eyes grew wide at what the message contained—

Memo: Re: Christmas 2021

Attn: All Elven Workers

It has been brought to my attention that the parents of the world are unhappy with our current Christmas approach. In light of this, I have decided to make the following changes effective immediately:

1. The Naughty and Nice List will henceforth be decommissioned

2. All mail addressed to Santa, Mrs Claus, Rudolph, The North Pole, or any of the other listed “wish” addresses will be sent directly to the incinerator.

3. Level 3 and 4 toymakers will be reallocated to incinerator duties

4. Level 1 and 2 toymakers will now be solely responsible for the production of bagpipes

5. That’s right, every child in the world is getting a set of bagpipes for Christmas this year

It is anticipated that these changes will enhance our image to align more with the ‘wokeness’ required to remain uncancelled moving forward.

Please direct all grievances to Elliot, my personal assistant.

“Sir… you can’t be serious?”

“Dead serious, Elliot. Cancel me? This will show them. If I can’t have my list, they can’t have theirs. I should’ve done this years ago! We slave away, year after year, trying to cater to those spoilt brats, and this is what it gets us! Half the time, I make sure they get their number one gift under the tree, only for Mom and Dad to go rogue and stick my name on every damn thing under there. No wonder so many kids don’t believe! Do you know how bad that makes me look, Elliot? When Bobby gets the Harry Potter book he wanted, and Tommy next door gets a Ps4?”

“It’s true. We have been getting those questions a lot in the post-Christmas survey.” I nodded as he continued his tirade.

“They think they’re so clever! Do they even know how much trouble a kid has to be in to get on the naughty list? They use me as a threat for the whole of December to get their kids to fall in line over the smallest things. And now they have the nerve to cancel me? Hypocrites, the lot of ‘em!.”

“So, you decided the best way to teach them a lesson is to give all the kids bagpipes?”

“Yes, Elliot. It’s genius. Most of the population can’t stand them played well, let alone a kid trying to learn. And for the kids who don’t want to learn, their whining over not getting what they wanted will serve as a fine substitute! Either way, those parents are screwed!”

-

As I gently shut the door to his office, the echo of his maniacal laughter followed me all the way down the corridor to my desk.

I scanned the memo in preparation to send it out to the workforce. I hesitated momentarily, then hit send.

For a brief moment, I felt bad for them, you know? They’re so caught up in using the internet to change the state of the world they don’t even notice who they're going after anymore.

But he’d made a good point. They needed to be taught a lesson. Like naughty kids on Christmas, those parents were about to learn what happens if you don’t play nice with old Saint Nick. The irony is, they’d probably never make the connection.

They’ll just try to cancel bagpipes next year instead.