Matthew Bird
The Christmas Chronicles (parts one and two) offer viewers a heart-warming story and a wonderful glimpse into the festive world that is Santa’s Village. The chimney-hopping, toy-making capabilities of most depictions of Santa pale in comparison to the Santa shown in these films. So, is this Santa a danger to us all?
There are minor spoilers to the films below. It is recommended you watch the films first, but it is not necessary.
Santa’s Village and the World Economy
Mrs Claus designed Santa’s village to act both as housing for the elven workforce, and as a factory manufacturing presents for the big day. The output of Santa’s Village is ostensibly to give every child a single gift (or maybe a couple of gifts for the super nice) on a single day of the year.
And yet, we are also told “If you combine Amazon, FedEx, the postal service, and UPS with every manufacturing company in the world, and they quadrupled their output for an entire year, well, you just might be getting close to what we can accomplish here in Santa’s Village in a single day.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but that capacity seems excessive. “Every manufacturing company in the world” is already able to provide for literally every other day of the year and not just for kids.
Were Santa to fully utilise his Village’s production capability he would destroy the world economy flooding it with free supply far in excess of demand
Given that the inputs Santa uses are naturally harvested or magically created, it follows that Santa isn’t actually contributing to any economy as he doesn’t buy raw materials. He seemingly gifts his full capacity and so doesn’t pay tax in any country. And his workforce are elves, which entirely exist within his Village, so they don’t pay tax either. And if a child asks for a branded product such as LEGO, we are shown that the elves can make that too, infringing on copyrights and trademarks.
Were Santa to fully utilise his Village’s production capability he would destroy the world economy flooding it with free supply far in excess of demand.
But what if Santa isn’t actually preparing to tank the economy? Perhaps Santa is stockpiling in preparation for the apocalypse.
Time Control
We are shown that a rudimentary time travel device can be made which runs on AAA batteries. This alone is enough to cause concern.
We are repeatedly shown that Santa possesses powerful magic. One of these is mind alteration in which he can give people musical skills they didn’t have before. Santa’s abilities are linked to Christmas Spirit. Spirit doesn’t deplete when Santa uses his abilities. People with new-found singing ability are then compelled to sing via Santa’s mind control. Them singing gets other people to sing and this increases Christmas Spirit which is what allows Santa to be magic in the first place.
Thus, we can conclude Santa has broken the laws of thermodynamics and created a form perpetual motion. A little bit of tinkering will do away with the AAA batteries and make it, too, run on Christmas Spirit creating a time travel device that never runs out of energy (so long as Santa is around).
Given that they essentially have infinite time to create the presents, such a large production operation is unnecessary for Christmas purposes
Although the time travel device doesn’t come into Santa’s possession until the second film, I believe he already had access to a form of time travel. We are told that time stands still in the North Pole, meaning all of time is happening around them. Thus, we must conclude that Santa chooses which time to travel to when he leaves to distribute presents. So, given that they essentially have infinite time to create the presents, such a large production operation is unnecessary for Christmas purposes.
This leads me to conclude that Santa has travelled to a future in which something terrible has happened. Something so devastating that it could disrupt a place where time literally doesn’t move. Or something so awful that Santa will need to provide humanity refuge.
So why doesn’t Santa just use time travel to stop it happening rather than prepare for its outcome? Well maybe time travel is what causes the problem.
Elf is Propaganda
Santa Claus is trying to stop it. He has channelled a literal star into the Village’s defence capabilities. He is, I argue, trying to protect the time travel device. Of course, given how time travel works, he couldn’t be sure when he would get the device so he setup the defences over a millennium in advance.
For a fleeting moment in the second film, we see a cinema in Santa’s Village showing the film Elf. Elf is a wholly inaccurate depiction of the North Pole, the elves, Santa Claus’s abilities, and the workings of the Village. One could say it is perfectly inaccurate.
I believe Santa released the film Elf and other inaccurate Santa films to throw people off the scent
Humans are a risk. If a military got hold of a time travel device they would be unstoppable. So, Santa needs humans to not believe he exists, and by extension have no reason to go looking for him.
But Santa depends on Christmas Spirit, which in a hand-wavey sort of way is linked to people believing in him which means he has to keep delivering presents. This is counter to his goal of people not believing in him.
I believe Santa released the film Elf and other inaccurate Santa films to throw people off the scent. To make Santa seem so utterly ridiculous that he couldn’t possibly be real. In Elf the elves joke about how silly it is that some people think the parents buy the gifts! It plants seeds of doubt into people’s minds. Perhaps it is even an extension of Santa’s mind control capabilities.
Two Options
The way I see it, the arguments presented above can be interpreted two ways. Either Santa is trying to protect the world from disaster but is preparing a stockpile just in case. Or Santa is preparing to destroy the world economy and/or use the time travel device for evil and is using Christmas films to make us think otherwise. My money is the on the former but let me know what you think with the poll below.
Matthew Bird
Featured Image courtesy of Roberto Nickson via Unsplash. Image use license found here. No changes made to this image.
In article video courtesy of Netflix via YouTube.
In-article image courtesy of Alicia Slough via Unsplash. Image use license found here. No changes made to this image.
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