DEAR Angry,
My name is Santa Clause. You might remember me as the man who got off with your mum under the mistletoe. As is my custom at this time of year, I have begun setting up makeshift grottos at shopping centres and malls around the world. These wonderful places allow me to bring smiles to the faces of children whilst conducting the important business of Christmas list gathering. This is perhaps my favourite part of the festive season. However, I have had difficulties this year in a small, backward country called England.
You see, I’ve noticed a rising number of fully grown adults coming into my grottos in cities such as Birmingham and Bristol. They’re often intoxicated and generally ignorant to the fact that I give priority to kids when giving out presents.
Worse yet, these nefarious characters appear to want only one thing for Christmas, and it goes by the name of Brexit. Sadly, they seem to think that I share their nightmarish vision of a political deal that shuts the door on immigration and restores “British” values to their homeland. Needless to say, I’m finding these conversations to be exasperating. As much as I am unquestionably magical and able to perform miracles at will, I simply cannot deliver something as fundamentally rotten as Brexit to these evidently naughty parents. I am also deeply worried about their children, who remain enchanted by simple things like toy railways – but how long until these terrible fathers turn their good offspring into bad grown-ups?
Santa
North Pole
AS you have likely discovered, Brexit is largely the product of a generation of adults who thought that “White Christmas” was a song about racial supremacy and “Deck The Halls” was a tune about Orange lodges. Instead of looking at this time of year as a reason to spread peace and goodwill, Brexiters appear determined to force upon us nostalgia for an age that never existed. For them, Christmas isn’t about being pro-charity, it’s about being anti-EU.
Indeed, for some indecipherable reason, these individuals have claimed that immigration is a threat to Christmas. This seems like crazy talk when you consider that Christmas itself began as a celebration of the birth of a Jew from Israel. Moreover, Santa, you are of Greek-Dutch lineage, and you seem to uphold a belief in open borders.
You also demonstrate somewhat of a disregard for customs, bringing countless undeclared items into the country, as well as eight gravity-defying reindeer. This is a horrifying notion to the Ukip-minded voter. To the likes of Nigel Farage, foreigners are bad, and foreigners that access the country without a passport, via flying deer, are doubly so.
Of course, if you were to grant the Christmas wish of the Brexiter, your festive travelling would be severely curtailed by excessive border control and passport checks. Asking Santa for a Christmas present that would massively disrupt Christmas itself seems somewhat myopic, yet it is entirely in keeping with the short-sighted idiocy we have come to expect from Brexiters. It doesn’t matter that you bring joy, happiness, and in your own deeply capitalistic way, improved business for the retail sector. For many Brexiters, the fact that Santa Clause has never been seen wearing a poppy or waving a Union Jack could be enough to justify a lifetime ban on him entering the UK.
Personally, I don’t think immigrants are a threat to Christmas – I think Britishness is. It is extremely probable that Jesus, should he return tomorrow, would be in jail by next week. A similar fate might also await yourself, a perennial migrant, should you appear in post-Brexit Britain. A foreigner without a passport who keeps asking kids to sit in his lap? Not under Ukip’s watch, my friend. Of course, these sorts of bigoted views are completely incompatible with a season that’s supposed to be about universal love. Christmas, as we all know, is a time for giving, and I think we should give these xenophobic fools a candy cane over the head and a boot up the chimneyhole.
The only Christmas miracle I desire this year is one that would see the prejudiced views that led to Brexit vanquished from this Earth. Scotland shares your beliefs about open borders, and I think we both agree that the European Union is good for my country, good for your business and good for the festive spirit. Scotland doesn’t want a British nationalist Noel, it wants a globalist Chrimbo! We want to share the Yuletide love with people of all creeds, colours and cultures. Nigel Farage might croon about wanting an all-white December 25th, but all I want for Christmas is EU!
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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