I hate to sound like a party pooper, or even worse, like I've grown cynical, but I have to admit that this year will be known for me as the year I stopped believing in Santa Claus.

It wasn't any one particular thing, just a series of things that built up until I said, "You know what? I'm fed up. Every year I keep asking for stuff I never get and there's too much proof. There is no Santa Claus."

Kids line up around the block to sit on my lap and tell me what they want for Christmas. And this isn't any one place, it's every town and every city everywhere all over the world. How is Santa supposed to be in all those places at once, you tell me that? It's just physically impossible. Some of them don't even look like me, they'll be Asian guys or black guys or occasionally a woman or something. Nothing wrong with that, of course, I just think it's obvious most of them—oh, let's face it, all of them—are guys in suits pretending to be me. Well, there goes Christmas, kids. You just told some minimum wage former stockboy what you want for Christmas. That helps.

This thing about the flying reindeer, too, it's complete baloney. Reindeer? Flying? Now if the story was that Santa had magical kid-loving dragons whose back he rode on, that would be pretty cool and believable. But you can see reindeer anywhere. Go ahead, push one off a roof, tie one to the back of your Cadillac and pull it five hundred yards at 60 mph, of all the things it will do it won't fly. If there's ever a time to go ahead and fly, that would be it, and they don't.

Who makes all these friggin' toys, too? Sure, in the days of the wooden rocking horse and the worthless rag doll with buttons for eyes, I could see that being the product of some elfin workforce laboring away in freezing conditions, but what about these cell phones, Playstation 2 consoles, Casio keyboards, and computers these kids are getting these days? Forget the difficulty in building toys that require high-tech skill, let's just ask about Star Wars figures or Pokemon cards or something. Not that elves couldn't make that stuff, but they'd be in violation of serious international copyright laws. You're talking about one bad-ass criminal St. Nick there.

He must be trained in some shady business to infiltrate houses all over the world. How many houses have chimneys these days? Santa's out there squeezing down air ventilation pipes, under locked doors, through keyholes, through sealed windows, all sorts of unimaginable stuff. Forget laughing with a "Ho, ho, ho," the Santa they're talking about must be a scary Eugene Tooms X-Files motherfucker.

And how many kids throughout the world? How many houses, how many presents? One guy doing all this stuff in one night? Even including time zones and expanding it out to a full 24 hours to get all this done, one guy, I don't care how mystical his ass is, will be finishing that job. Forget it. Not in one year, certainly not in one day.

I'm not even leaving the house this Christmas. It's too confounding to think about. I'll probably just stay in with Mrs. Claus, sit around the fireplace and lick candycanes, maybe watch that Charlie Brown Christmas special on DVD or something, catch It's A Wonderful Life if it's even playing and just take it easy this year. Get a good night's sleep for once and check out the Day After Christmas sales if I get up early enough on the 26th. The only person I'm going to be asking for anything from is Mrs. Claus. If Santa can do all this other amazing crap he can read minds as well, so maybe he'll bring me that Palm V I've been eyeing in the Office Depot newspaper supplements. But he probably won't be happy because all I'm thinking this year is there is no Santa Claus, sorry if that pisses off the time-bending B&E reindeer pilot himself.

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