COLUMN: Yes Virginia, Santa’s a killer
On my prioritized task list of most painful things to do, reading The Utah Statesman (Motto: Our spell-checker is operated by squirrels.) falls right between braiding my leg hairs into rope and eating Legos and dying. That’s why I was so surprised to find myself reading it the other day.
The headline “Santa arrested for murdering daughter” momentarily caught my attention. Apparently Santa was being incarcerated for stabbing his daughter in the neck with a butcher knife. As you might imagine, a slew of questions bounced around my mind like roller-skating monkeys on acid, begging for answers.
Santa has a daughter?
Does Mrs. Claus know this?
What fills Ol’ Saint Nick with such murderous rage?
Roller-skating Monkeys?
I needed answers, plus I was hoping to find some catchy one-liners like “Season’s Bleedings!” and “Ho, Ho, Ho, I’m going to kill you.”
Alas, none were to be found; and it turned out to be nothing more than a man dressed up as Santa who then knifed his daughter in the neck. Why? Apparently an argument over Christmas decorations had ensued and the logical conclusion was that his daughter must die. The article didn’t mention where this took place, but I suspect it was in some backwater dystopia like Ogden or Wyoming, where residents often grow restless during the downtime between NASCAR and hunting season.
Regardless of the tragic nature of the crime, I can relate to Santa in this particular instance. Christmas decorations have always been a hotly debated issue in my family. This generally stems from my mom’s insistence on having them. Personally, I can think of better ways in which to spend my time (eating cheesecake and taking a nap both come to mind).
I suppose the idea of expending effort on something that is just going to require cleaning-up later has never seemed like a rational thing for me to pursue. (This philosophy is similar to the one which I take with dating.) Unfortunately, mothers (and females in general) often lose touch with the rational thought process around the age of… birth, and rarely see the value in avoiding those trivialities.
Rudimentary concepts such as “You will likely plummet to your grizzly death whilst on the ice-covered roof,” have evaded the collective female cognizance for eons, and every December I’m tasked to string up those cursed lights … just as every July or August I’m forced to take them back down. So, I give props to Santa for taking a stand … murderous as it may be.
In any case, back to my point. Although getting stabbed in the neck is an unfortunate mishap (I once got poison ivy on my neck and it hurt like heck … I almost feel a kinship with the daughter.), the image of Santa wielding a butcher knife is certainly evocative. Just think of the potential for parental threats!
Christmas had almost been transformed into something really useful. As a kid, I remember striving to be good simply because Santa Claus was watching me … and because I wanted lots of crap for Christmas. But, the idea of an omniscient and murderous sociopath vowing to pay each child an annual visit would have improved things drastically. No more shaved cats! No more drinking gutter-water! What effect it might have on the punk, Pokémon-loving kids nowadays?
For instance, the song “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” might be changed to:
You’d better watch out. You’d better not cry. You’d better not pout. I’m telling you why. Because Santa Claus will kill you in your sleep!
Or the poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore:
‘Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, apparently they had all been butchered alive.
Granted, they might need to work on the whole rhyming aspect, but the possibilities are otherwise pretty much endless.
In conclusion, have a merry little Christmas … but not too merry. Santa doesn’t like it. We already know how he feels about decorations. My advice to you is to not get on his bad side. (That would be the side carrying the butcher knife.)
Blake W. Bingham is a senior in engineering. When he was young, he thought pumpkin pie looked like poop. E-mail him at bwb@cc.usu.edu, if you thought it did too.