Ho ho humbug! Santa says he's been getting fake letters from greedy adultsFather Christmas sits at his desk, frowning.
In front of him are piles and piles of letters; some neatly inked in very best handwriting, some splurged with wax crayon or scrawled with blunt and broken pencils.
These are the letters sent to him from all the little children everywhere in the world; millions upon millions of Christmas hopes and dreams.
Each year, Father Christmas sorts through this pile of paper wishes. He enters every child's name in his big red Toys Out ledger, then sends the letter down to the elves' workshop.
There, the presents are made ready for stacking on to the sleighs on the day before the night before Christmas. Usually he enjoys this task - no, he loves this task! - but at the moment Father Christmas looks furious. What in the name of striped candy canes has made him so mad?
'This lot!' he cries, snatching a pile of letters from a postal in-tray marked London SW1. 'I mean, do they think I am completely stupid? Me? Father Christmas? I'm not some silly Smurf who doesn't know his own nose from a blueberry.
'I'm not a bleedin' Womble, excuse my Finnish. Don't these people realise that after 600 years in this job I can smell a letter from an adult at a thousand paces? Especially one from a greedy adult pretending to be a child?'
He picks up one letter, written on cream vellum with a green portcullis stamped on the top, and wafts it under my nose.
'Here. Just take a look at this lot!' No wonder he is so angry. No wonder we are all so angry!
The first letter is written in inky capitals from someone calling himself Pee-wee Viggers. For Christmas, Pee-wee wants a replacement floating duck house for 'one that wuz taken away by the bad man'.
A boy called Duggy Hoggy wants 'my moat cleaned, please Santa, do it nice.' Master Q. Davies wants 'lots of money, please' to rebuild a bell tower.
'A bell tower!' cries Father Christmas. 'I am the spirit of good cheer at Christmas. I am one of the most famous and loved men in the whole world - and even I don't have a bell tower. Simon Cowell doesn't have a bell tower. The Pope doesn't have a (well, actually he does, but that's not the point). I mean, what is wrong with these people?'
THERE are many letters like this. A boy called Austin Mitchell wants more ginger crinkle biscuits 'because they are yummy and match my hair' and also because 'free things taste nicer'. A small boy called Michael Gove-Crachit is so tiny that all he wants from Santa is a mattress for his own little cot.
A saucy girl called Jacqui S writes that she would like 'two blue DVDs - and Santa I don't mean the boring BBC ones about the ocean, nudge-nudge, wha-hey, kissy, kissy.'
'She's mad,' says Father Christmas, crumpling her letter and throwing it into a bin etched with the stark legend: LIES.
An earnest girl called Harriet H has sent a photograph of herself dressed in an Amish- style, organic cotton Santa Claus costume.
'Dear Parent Christmas,' her letter begins. 'You have had your own way for too long. It's time equality came down the chimney. How many of your reindeers are female, for a start?'
Father Christmas looks puzzled. 'Eh? I don't know. I've never looked. I just chose the best ones for the job. Is that wrong?' he wonders, throwing her letter in the LIES bin next to Jacqui's.
The very last one on the pile is from a boy called Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, who writes: 'Hi, Dad Christmas! All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth - and I want people to stop blaming me for Iraq because it wasn't my fault, George made me do it and he is a bully.'
Father Christmas thinks for a moment. 'So. He wants his past forgotten and his presents remembered? He will never learn, will he?' he says, and throws the Blair letter into a special bin, this one marked:
Damned Lies. Sighing, Father Christmas tells me he has never known a year like this, where so many 'grown-ups have been so very, very naughty', displaying behaviour that has been worse than even 'the very worst child'.
Then, as he moves on to a pile of genuine letters from children, a big smile peeps from under his white beard and his baggy eyes crinkle up, just like Twiggy's. 'This is more like it,' he says, picking up his swan feather quill and dipping it into a pot brimming with snowproof ink.
In the glimmering candlelight, as the wind whistles around his North Pole HQ and another winter night rushes in, Father Christmas gets back to work. He writes quickly and neatly, his nib squeaking across the ledger like skating mice on ice.
When he has finished, he clips the Dear Santa letter on to a pulley and presses a button. Behind him, a pair of red velvet curtains flies open and the letter is whisked away.
'Come, my dear. Come and have a look at the view,' he says, leading me over to a window that looks down over the original Santa's grotto and workshop, hundreds of feet below us. It is an incredible sight. The gleaming white space, which has been carved out of a glacier, stretches for miles under the polar ice cap.
Silver and red bulbs light desks where elves in striped tights and pointed hats sing as they wrap presents and tie big ribbon bows.
Trolleys full of toys whisk past the glassy walls, trundling along on tiny rail tracks. Father Christmas points out one desk, bigger than the others, where the letter he has just sent down is being processed.
A head elf dressed in a white jacket stamps it twice with a rubber seal and shouts the order into a microphone.
'OK, here we go. One scooter, one pet hamster, one Beano annual, two Hello Kitty hair bands, a selection box, three glitter bendy pencils. Go, go, go!' he shouts, sounding more like Gordon Ramsay than a goblin
Father Christmas closes the curtains and smiles. Up close, he looks cosy and content in his thick flannel coat - edged with ermine, how daring! - with its matching trousers and shiny boots.
He smells clean and resinous, like a cold wind shimmering through a stand of pines, and his cheeks glow like apples.
He has agreed to this unique interview with the Daily Mail because, he says, he has some matters to raise, some things he wants to make clear, some rumours he wants to put straight. Naturally, I imagine one of these is that he is tired of people not believing in him?
'Not at all! Who do you think I am, David Cameron?' he cries.
Of course, he is displeased that health-and-safety experts now say his big tummy and mince-pie guzzling ways set a bad example to modern children. They want an image of a slim Santa jogging happily on a treadmill to promote a healthy message at Christmas.
'It's just not going to happen,' says Father Christmas, shaking his head. 'It's all layers anyway. I'm big boned. And think how disappointed the children would be if I didn't eat the food they leave out for me? It would break their little hearts.
'Why don't they pick on Tinker Bell? She's the one with the weight issues. Have you seen how thin she's got? Why pick on me?
'I suppose you are wondering how I get down the chimney?'
Actually, yes. 'And how do I find all the children? That's what the little ones always want to know. And the answers to those questions are, in order; with increasing difficulty, and by using my Santa-Nav.'
Yet this has not been the best of years for Father Christmas. Although he still administers the bulk of the Christmas orders, online shopping means that websites such as Amazon and eBay are encroaching on his territory.
'People forget they have got to put their faith in someone they can trust - and that someone is me,' he insists.
On top of this, he is enraged by inferior grotto imposters; the men and women he calls Santa's Barmy Army who infiltrate shopping malls all over the country.
'Sometimes, of course, it actually is me,' he says. 'But all those pimply blokes with earrings and dirty trainers who pretend to be me? The cheek of it!
'Or mangy terriers prowling around a hut with a bit of sheepskin glued onto their flanks pretending to be Rudolph. The shame of it all! It's bad for business. It has got to be stopped.'
Then he takes me outside to see the reindeer. As befits their special status as flying reindeer, their names are etched in sparking letters above each individual stable; Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen. The biggest stable of all, the one at the end, is reserved for Rudolph.
In the cold air, steam plumes from their velvet nostrils and they stamp their hooves with excitement. In only a few days they will embark on their annual mission, flying around the world at speeds faster than the crack of a whip. And unlike BA crew, there's no danger this flying squad will go on strike.
'They eat much more than me, it's so unfair,' says Father Christmas, patting Rudolph's nose.
Then he bids me and the animals - and all the children in the world - goodnight.
He has a busy time ahead of him, this special man who knows when you are sleeping and knows when you're awake. So be good for goodness sake. It's not that hard.
Merry Christmas, nearly everybody!
source: dailymail
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