Prof. William M. Epstein
University of Nevada, Las Vegas | UNLV · School of Social Work – USA

A few days ago, I received the most singular honor of my admittedly
not terribly honorable career. I wish to share it with you.

While every year at about this time, hundreds of millions of children
and even many of their parents write to Santa Klaus, I am the
only person who has ever received a letter from him.

I would like to read it to you. Those of you who believe in Santa
Klaus will be pleased to know that he is still at it. But I warn you now,
he may not be exactly what you had in mind all these years.
                                                                                                       December 1

Dear Bill,

I am sorry I could not drop by last year but some lunatic on the ground took a shot at Rudolph and blew up his nose. Blitzen went berserk and the other reindeer stampeded.

The trip back to the North Pole was a dark nightmare of looming radio towers and of terrified reindeer losing their lunch all over North America. People on the ground were either dropping to their knees in prayer over the new type of weather or rushing for their guns.

That imbecile Prancer kept charging off in the wrong direction. I would signal left and this hamster of a reindeer would turn right. We would try a right and the herd retard would try a left. This was not the first sign of Prancer’s stupidity and all the way back I kept thinking that he has a fixed destiny as pot roast.

Because of the rout back to the North Pole, I neglected to make some of my promised deliveries to the so-called „nice“ boys and girls. But then again, maybe it was all to the good. Many of these kids are nasty, self-centered little brats who might learn a better lesson from disappointment than from their addiction to the world’s generosity. God, I am sick of these greedy piglets; they sit on my lap, spraying my face with their puny virtues and trivial deeds:

„Oooh Thanta, I helped an old lady croth the thtreet. Oooh Thanta, I took out the garbage. Oooh Thanta, I thang in the choir.“

So what? Big deal. Who cares?

And their parents beam with fat, immobile pride as their sweaty tadpoles squirm through their moment of celebrity, lying like used car salesmen and evangelical preachers.

The prospect of spawning kids like this was more than I could bear. I confess, just a short while after I began this lousy job, I sneaked out for a quiet vasectomy.

Well, I didn’t tell Ethel but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Actually, considering her age she still looks pretty good…no kids to stretch her out. But then again maybe believing for these many years that she is barren has eaten her up. It has probably been the cause of her awful nagging.

Good God, never a pleasant word. Not a moment’s peace. Not the faintest sigh of satisfaction or even of grudging acceptance that I am only Santa Klaus and not a big-shot tycoon. She never lets me forget my paycheck, „The Snow Queen has a new coat. The King of the North took his wife to Florida. But my husband, Mr. One and Only Santa Klaus, can’t even take his one and only wife out for dinner. „

Ethel is a bitch, a bitch, a bitch.

In truth, I would dump her frail bones even now, after all these years of marriage, but the North Pole is not a Las Vegas dating service and elves and
reindeer do not tempt me anymore.

One Christmas Eve, some considerate soul might have the decency to improvise on the strict tradition of setting out a glass of milk and a cooky for Santa. I could really use some scotch and nooky. I’d put an extra toy under her Christmas tree. A nice one. Not some crap from China.

This Santa Klaus business began badly and it has kept up the theme with fanatical consistency. I was out of work in 1936 and Ethel and I were living on some money she had inherited from her mother. There it was one October, an ad for a permanent job as Santa Klaus. They were looking for an
easy going Christian with some management experience. And the advertised pay looked pretty good at the time. In the Thirties anything connected to money looked reasonable.

I told them that I was Baptist — God forgive me — but I did have the other credentials: a jolly seventy-five pounds bouncing above my belt, a pair of cheeks that lit up like cathedral lights when plugged into a half bottle, and a raucous laugh that made even psychotics feel at home. But living all these years as a fake Christian is wearing on me. I worry that I have apostatized myself. While I have not lived as a good Jew should, I still want to be buried as one, although I must admit, it is more to spite the pious bastards who preach the virtues of Santa to their children than to please my mother, may she rest in peace.

I tell you, I needed the job. And that is what it is: just a job. I would like to scream this at the lunatics who think that they are born into the care of a personal guardian angel. „Santa Klaus is a business. Santa Klaus is a business.“

And it is a rotten business. Who in their right mind would voluntarily spend decades locked in the North Pole ice box. And the noise is enough to make a dead man think that the hair across his ass is the Brooklyn Bridge. Ethel is bad enough, but her whining is virtually lyrical when weighed against more than 55 years trapped with elves who never shut their squeaky fucking mouths.

Once, a long time ago, I lost it with the elves. I shrieked out exactly what I thought of them in minute detail. How stupid they were. How ugly. How sloppy. Well, when I stopped, it was so quiet you could hear a rat piss on cotton. It made me real antsy looking into their red, hate filled eyes. I backed off and apologized. Bill, you do not mess with elves.

myself. While I have not lived as a good Jew should, I still want to be buried as one, although I must admit, it is more to spite the pious bastards who preach the virtues of Santa to their children than to please my mother, may she rest in peace.