Look. Santa’s been around for a while. A spring chicken he isn’t.
Plus — as us collaborators know only too well — he has bad habits. It’s not the drugs or the drink. It’s the snacks.
You know the way we use the word ‘treats’ to excuse scoffing salted caramel anything? Covers a multitude, that word ‘treats’, with its implication of rarity and its paired implication of somehow having been earned by earlier privation or meritorious effort. The world may not owe you a living, or fame, or fortune, but we still feel entitled to treats and extrapolate from that to the conviction that we must all reward/bribe Santa by setting out a saucer of cookies and a glass of milk. It’s a reprehensible form of cause and effect.
Parents spend the year conscientiously refusing ever to link food with their children’s occasional good behaviour. Back in the day, this wasn’t a problem because, once you had the bonding thing nailed, parenting was down to training your kids like dogs: “Homework done? Who’s a good boy, then?” Then enlightenment struck and the instructions to well-behaved offspring to sit and gratefully snaffle a KitKat morphed into as shameful exemplar of your parental inadequacies so vile that you knew, if you stood for election, even a crime gang leader would do better than you. Santa, of course, bypasses all this child development woke stuff.
He still operates the canine training model: “Been a good girl? Here’s a whole stocking full of reward for y.
:upscale()/2025/01/08/840/n/1922794/tmp_CS3Hyk_d03e1c4a00fa6d47_Basic_Collage-3-Main_-_1456x970_35_.jpeg)
