Toward Ecosophy

Gather ‘round the fireplace, children, and I’ll tell you a Yuletide story. It’s not one of the ones you grew up watching on the media, and there’s a reason for that, which we’ll get to. I think you’ll appreciate it anyway.

This story begins in the autumn of 1948. Back then Santa Claus lived in a big house at the North Pole with his wife Perchta, who’s old-fashioned enough that she likes to call herself Mrs. Claus. The two of them spent long hours every year getting ready for Christmas.  Mrs. Claus, who was the logistical brains behind the operation, ordered raw materials and drew up flight plans and made sure Santa, the elves, the reindeer, and everyone else had everything they needed, while Santa superintended the toy workshops and kept track of who’d been naughty and who’d been nice. Back then, you see, you didn’t get Christmas presents just for existing. Bad little children really did find lumps of coal in their stockings when they got up on Christmas morning, while good little children didn’t have to settle for the cheap plastic trash you get under the tree nowadays. The presents they got, since they were made by elves, really were magical.

So everyone was happy—well, except for the CEOs of certain big multinational corporations in the toymaking industry, whose cheap plastic trash couldn’t compete with magical toys made by elves, and who saw their profits take a nosedive every December. So they hatched a plot.  They formed a secret organization, which they called the Christmas Cartel; they bribed politicians and got the big media corporations on their side; they laid their plans; and on Christmas Eve of 1948, they struck. Hired thugs on their payroll flew to the North Pole and kicked their way into Santa’s house. Some of them dragged Santa off to a waiting airplane while the others held Mrs. Claus and the elves at gunpoint. 

As far as we know, that’s the last anyone outside the Christmas Cartel has seen of the real Santa Claus. Because he’s immortal, they couldn’t just shoot him and dump his corpse in the snow, but he’s been held incommunicado in an undisclosed location ever since. The guy in the red and white suit you’ve seen all over the media since then?   He’s a ringer, a washed-up Hollywood character actor named Fred Mammon.  He doesn’t drive the sleigh on Christmas Eve—he’s usually too drunk.  The Cartel turned that job over to a string of commercial pilots instead, who use cattle prods on the reindeer. The Cartel took over the whole operation at the North Pole, holding Mrs. Claus under armed guard and making the elves work sixteen-hour days under sweatshop conditions.  Meanwhile the fake Santa spread the messages the Cartel wanted everyone to hear:  shop ‘til you drop, everyone gets presents, max out those credit cards, ho ho ho!

So that’s what happened. That’s what turned Christmas from a genuine time of merriment with a few presents mixed in, as it used to be, to today’s annual orgy of crass consumerism and mindless greed, propped up by gargantuan advertising budgets and all those stickily sweet holiday specials on television.  That’s why nobody gets lumps of coal in their stockings any more, why all the Christmas carols these days sound like advertising jingles, and why Christmas turned all fake and creepy and saccharine and weird. Corporate marketing departments aren’t capable of real merriment, you see. All they know how to do is to wheedle and bully you into spending money you don’t have on things you never really wanted in the first place.

But that’s the way things have been ever since—until late this autumn.

Forty days ago, with the help of a courageous band of loyal elves, Mrs. Claus made her long-planned escape. You really don’t want to know what happened to her guards. (Back in the days when she was the loveliest of the Yuletide spirits and was courted by the dashing young Santa, Perchta had quite a reputation, and her fingernails have lost none of their sharpness since then.)  Over the days that followed, she fled across the ice through the pitch-black depths of the Arctic winter, moving from one stealthily prepared cache of food and supplies to the next, hiding from the helicopters and snowmobile patrols of the Christmas Cartel.  Four days ago, despite the odds against her, she made it to safety in the Yukon. I’m not authorized to tell you where she is now, but she’s fine—and she needs your help.

Somewhere in the world, Santa is being held captive by the agents of the Christmas Cartel. Mrs. Claus, her team of loyal elves, and friends of their cause are looking for him. If they can find him and free him, the power of the Christmas Cartel will be broken and we’ll be able to have real Christmases again. If you can spread the word, so that everyone knows what happened, that Christmas doesn’t have to be the festival of greed that it’s become and that the “Santa” they see on the media and in malls is a fake, that will make the search easier—because sooner or later, the news will reach someone who knows where a kindly, white-bearded old man is being held captive by the goon squads of the Christmas Cartel.

And if you look into a Christmas ornament tonight—the old-fashioned kind, a plain sphere of colored glass meant to reflect smiles and candles and firelight—you might just see the face of Mrs. Claus looking back out at you, saying, “Help me find Santa Claus. It’s our only hope...”