RUDOLF the reindeer pawed the evening snow with a hoof, while he waited for the 2018 Global Christmas Present Run to begin. The new elf in charge of navigation was looking worried but had reason to be – preparing this year’s delivery schedule had been outsourced to the same people who timetabled British train services.
But Rudolf wasn’t concerned. The Big Man had chosen him lead reindeer all those years ago because of his amazing, flashing red nose that shone through fog and dark. Rudolf would find a way to deliver those precious gifts come hail, rain or hard Brexit.
The Big Man climbed on board the sleigh and raised a thumbs up.
Immediately, the sound of the William Tell Overture bellowed out from the sleigh’s audio system, and they were off! The navigation elf was desperately clinging to the back of Dasher with one hand, while trying to read his map with the other. But Rudolf knew where he was going, gliding due south over the Baltic, for the Nordic and Russian leg.
Suddenly all hell broke loose. Aircraft and rockets flashed by on all sides. Rudolf had flown smack into Nato’s revamped Baltic Early Warning Zone, focus of its new Cold War with Russia. Command centres in London, Washington and Moscow were already throwing up warnings of UFOs. Was this for real or another accident, as had happened only last August, when a Spanish jet on patrol over Estonia accidentally fired a missile that could have triggered a catastrophic Russian retaliation?
Nato’s Aegis anti-missile missile batteries in Romania and Poland (inaugurated in 2018) went on alert, prompting a similar response from Russia’s nuclear-tipped Iskander rockets in Kaliningrad. At Fylingdales in Yorkshire, Britain’s most secret radar complex, anxious commanders prepared for World War Three. They will know before anyone else when The End comes, or at least a few seconds before Donald Trump posts his final tweet.
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However, thanks to Rudolf’s long-practised aerobatics, Santa’s sleigh neatly avoided the bemused Nato and Russian pilots, leaving them to return to base (and bed) muttering about another false alarm.
Only the navigation elf seemed put out, because somewhere during the hard turn westwards over central Europe, he had lost his map. Meanwhile, sleeping children went on dreaming of tomorrow and the presents they would open, thankfully oblivious to the adult world. Relaxing a bit, Rudolf could hear the flight crew elves desperately trying to hand Santa the correct sacks of presents, in the right order.
This year, the North Pole’s department for supplying Ironic Presents for Politicians had been working overtime, due to a surfeit of politicians requiring irony transplants.
As a result, the sleigh was a tad over-packed, so finding that genuine gold leaf yellow jacket for delivery to Paris’s Elysee Palace was proving a headache amid all the artificial, plastic backbones tagged for the UK Labour’s front bench.
Yet not all politicians are craven or venal. Some actually are genuine leaders who risk all for a cause.
Rudolf knew that, safe under Santa’s seat, there was a special package, wrapped in red and gold striped paper. It was addressed “Feliç Nadal” and destined for Carme Forcadell and all the political prisoners in Catalonia. It contained a special gift indeed: the golden key of freedom.
READ MORE: Jailed Catalan leader heralds 'new era' of Spain relationship
Then suddenly the North Sea appeared, illuminated in a shaft of silver moonlight. Rudolf was approaching one of his (and Santa’s) favourite places, a land called Caledonia. Here they would stop for Santa to imbibe a quick and warming nip of single malt – a tradition since 1967 when (belatedly) Christmas Day was first made a public holiday in Presbyterian Caledonia. Historically, Caledonians had been slow to take up Christmas, preferring to celebrate a pagan New Year. Then they realised it was not an either/or choice and they had a perfect excuse to stay off work from Christmas Eve till Ne’erday and not remain sober. Santa respected their enthusiasm.
True, the Caledonians were as monotonously unimaginative as the rest of the world in the presents they demanded: Red Redemption II, Ariana Grande albums, and Bose sleep-inducing earbuds. But the Caledonian’s had a redeeming quality, as far as Rudolf was concerned: their irrepressible need to be positive about politics.
Yes, they were also manic depressive romantics, in sport as well as politics. But aside from a few rotten apples, they tried to approach political questions looking for solutions rather than being relentlessly negative about their opponents. This trait affected Santa’s distribution of presents. Most folk don’t appreciate that Santa delivers what people deserve rather than what they ask for. At Santa’s age, it’s his only real fun.
Rudolf couldn’t wait to see Donald Trump’s face when he didn’t get the bumper Lego Mexican wall set that he’d asked for. Or how the US president would react when the bottle of Chinese hair regeneration fluid turned out to do the opposite of what it said on the label. Rudolf worried the elves hadn’t thought that one through, especially after the resignation of the last sane person in the White House, general “Mad Dog” Mattis.
Santa’s bag of presents for Caledonian politicians and literati was above average this year. For Joanna Cherry QC MP, there was a permanent seat on Any Questions. For think tank guru Robin McAlpine, whose letters to Santa usually ran to 3000 forensically detailed pages, there was an ice bag with a bespoke Common Weal logo. For the Growth Commission’s Andrew Wilson, his face on the new Scottish currency after independence. And for the 100,000 who marched for freedom in Edinburgh in October, an independence referendum in 2019.
But Santa hadn’t neglected Caledonia’s dark side. For Secretary of State Mundell there was a lifetime, daily delivery of Arbroath Smokies wrapped in his discarded resignation letters. For Labour’s Richard Leonard, a crocodile with a ticking “election” clock, to remind him of the inevitable electoral consequences for his party of only attacking the SNP while letting the Tories off the hook. For Conservative MP Ross Thomson, a personalised vanity case and body-size wall mirror for his bathroom. And for Nicholas Soames, a year’s sojourn in Skye where he can learn what he’s missing.
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With a whoosh, Rudolf was south over the Pennines leaving the frozen navigation elf connected to the sleigh by only his scarf. But Rudolf was troubled.
Below lay the world’s fifth biggest economy, yet this Christmas morning it was a land of hungry children and food banks. A country where homeless folk died at the very doors of a Parliament that had gone home for the festivities, rather than take vital decisions.
Before take-off, Rudolf had read a letter to Santa from a child who wanted no presents because his mum was on Universal Credit and no benefit cash was due for six weeks. Rudolf thought back to Santa’s delivery run in 1843 – the hungriest of years in what people called the Hungry Forties – when Mr Dickens published A Christmas Carol and the very first printed Christmas card was sent. As well as depicting a family enjoying Christmas, that card had a side image of food being given to a destitute child.
“My God”, thought Rudolf. “Has nothing has changed in England in 175 years?”
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