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Anonymous Op-Ed
I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the North Pole
I work for Santa but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
Sept. 25, 2018
Christmas All The Time is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior elficial in the Santa administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.
Santa Claus is facing a test to his leadership unlike any faced by a legendary holiday persona.
It’s not just that the toy audit looms large. Or that the North Pole is bitterly divided over Santa’s leadership. Or even that his faction might well lose the Workshop to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.
The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior elficials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
I would know. I am one of them.
To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the krampuses. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made Christmas jollier and more prosperous.
But we believe our first duty is to the holiday, and Santa continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of the North Pole.
That is why many Santa appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our celebratory institutions while thwarting Mr. Claus’s more misguided impulses until he is driven out of the Candycane Castle.
The root of the problem is the arch-elf’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible Yuletide Spirit that guide his decision making.
Although he was appointed as the embodiment of a holiday, Santa shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservative elves: merry elves, at-will present creation and free cookies & milk. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.
In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the Naughty/Nice Department is the “enemy of the people,” Santa Claus’s impulses are generally anti-regifting and anti-hierarchical.
Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective chimney sweeping, historic gift wrap reform, a more robust navigation for deliveries and more.
But these successes have come despite — not because of — the arch-elf’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.
From the North Pole to elf-xecutive branch depots and agencies, senior elficials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the sleigh driver’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.
Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.
“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top elficial complained to me recently, exasperated by a North Pole meeting at which Santa flip-flopped on a major holiday decision he’d made only a week earlier.
The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the Workshop. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the grapevine. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to Santa’s residence, though they are clearly not always successful.
It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but elves should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Santa Claus won’t.
The result is a two-track holiday season.
Take children policy: In public and in private, Santa Claus shows a preference for brats and bullies, such as Big Billy Brayton of Elm Park and the Brickdale Treehouse Club’s leader, Kenny Stellman, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to obedient, well-behaved children.
Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where brats like Big Billy are called out for bullying and punished accordingly, and where obedient children around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as undeserving sheep.
On Brickdale, for instance, Santa was reluctant to include so many of Mr. Stellman’s cronies in punishment for the delivery of laxative-laced brownies to a former Treehouse Club member at school. He complained for weeks about senior elf-visers letting him get boxed into further confrontation with the Naughty/Nice Department, and he expressed frustration that the North Pole continued to impose sanctions on the Club members for their malign behavior. But his rational delivery team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold the Treehouse accountable.
This isn’t the work of the so-called old guard. It’s the work of the swing shift.
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the guild of invoking the Kringle Clause, which would start a complex process for removing Santa. But no one wanted to precipitate a legendary crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the holiday in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
The bigger concern is not what Santa has done to the holiday but rather what we as a holiday institution have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.
Frosty the Snowman put it best in his farewell letter. All elves and krampuses should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great holiday.
We may no longer have Frosty the Snowman. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our North Pole dialogue. Santa Claus may fear such honorable snowmen, but we should revere them.
There is a quiet resistance within the administration of elves choosing to put holiday first. But the real difference will be made by everyday denizens rising above workshop politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: North Polars.
The writer is a senior elficial in the Santa administration.