By: Zainab Salam, Reporter in Hiding
By the time the headline “Santa Claus Hates Everyone” ricocheted across the internet and news outlets, the world had already begun cancelling Christmas. Children sobbed into their half-eaten gingerbread men. Christmas influencers rebranded as “seasonally ambivalent creators.” One particular parenting blogger recommended replacing Santa with a “more emotionally available snowman,” noting that Frosty at least “shows up when he says he will and respects boundaries.”
But as any good investigative publication knows, when a story smells fishy, it usually isn’t because of herring snacks at the North Pole. And so began our descent into what we now refer to as The Clausgate Scandal.
The original interview, published by the aggressively festive tabloid The Daily Spinner, claimed Santa had gone “full festive nihilist” during a rare on-the-sleigh interview. The reporter interviewing Mr. Claus claimed that the jolly man had growled, “I despise joy. I resent children.” The Daily Spinner had reported on this incident, describing Mr. Claus’ resentment as a “deep festering hatred for anything festive.” Further alleging that his “ho ho hos” had taken on a “menacing, vaguely capitalist undertone.”
Here at our publication, Real News, we doubted such reporting as it doesn’t align with Mr. Claus’ personal brand of peppermint and generosity. After all, this is a man who once led unionization efforts to secure dental benefits for the elves. As such, we’ve launched an investigation into The Daily Spinner and their reporter. Once we began our closer inspection, cracks appeared faster than a poorly baked sugar cookie that seemed to crumple before touching it. Audio forensics here at this prestigious publication revealed suspicious editing of the interview footage: long pauses, reversed “ho ho hos,” and what experts described as “a suspicious overlay of a disgruntled mall Santa Claus from a suburban strip mall in Burnaby.”
Moreover, financial records obtained through a whistleblowing elf reveal that The Daily Spinner and its reporter were discreetly compensated by Coke. Our team managed to briefly intercept Mr. Claus while he was practising his Christmas delivery route, somewhere above rural Manitoba. He vehemently denied the allegations while attempting to reroute a mildly rebellious reindeer.
“I never said I hate everyone,” he clarified. “I said I hate having artificial intelligence (AI) duplicating my likeness onto beverages without consent. And now they used AI to edit my voice? Ho, ho, NO!”
For decades, Mr. Claus’ image has been plastered across Coke cans, bottles, and other products. As a self-described “hardcore Trotskyist,” Mr. Claus expressed that he was simply “tired of this shit.” For the first time in his life, he had filed a subpoena against Coke to get rid of the AI-generated Santas from the brand’s cans and ads.
This, of course, created an enormous problem for Mr. Claus — his residential address was leaked. WikiLeaks leaked his information all over the internet, causing the Russian government to threaten a takeover of his home and toy-making factory unless Mr. Claus pays taxes to the financially-ill Russian government.
This explains why Mr. Claus was so aggressive with the reporter from The Daily Spinner. He told me that he fears that the Russian government and Big Beverage is after him, causing him to respond to all approaching individuals with a bottle of pepper spray ready to go. For Mr. Claus, Christmas Day will go on as usual unless Big Beverage shuts down his operation. “It’s not a front, I swear to God,” Santa told us, despite us not asking him anything in that nature.
