Modern day Gulag: Santa’s Workshop is anything but merry

There is one last robber baron in the North. He goes by Santa Claus, the King of Coal, Saint of Nicholas, Father of Christmas. He steals milk and cookies, charms children, abuses elves and feasts on reindeer meat.

Alabaster Snowball, Santa’s 139th Chief Operating Elf (COE) in the foundry department, is one of several refugees from Santa’s Workshop. 

Alabaster used to cast tin men for little boys. He escaped from the Workshop almost 30 years ago in a bobsled pulled by cats and fairies, surviving on a ration of gingerbread and candy canes. He fled through the Siberian tundra, drinking the snow he melted with a stolen blowtorch, rushing past the empty gulags and Soviet work camps (which he said almost reminded him of home). 

Alabaster lives in Saratoga now. Every Christmas Eve, he hides in his basement, where his red-green fatigues and little elf hat are still stored. His hair, once well-trimmed, is now a mop of grey and white. He stands 4-3 and speaks in a thick Irish accent two octaves higher than the human vocal register.

“Santa looks like any big jolly bloke,” Alabaster told me in hushed tones over a Candy-cane Mocha at Starbucks recently. “But really, he’s got a heart darker than the coal in naughty children’s stockings.” 

While the rest of civilization has climbed out of the pits of feudalism and slavery, Santa has continued to abuse the rights of his labor force through wage slavery and coercion.

Elves, young and old, labor 80 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. Some make toys; some spy on kids; some pamper Santa; some run operations and management. Santa pays them in IOU slips, which are redeemable for candy canes and eggnog in Santa’s retail store — Elves, Shelves and Jolly Consumables.

A recent exposé secretly funded by the UN Commission on Human Rights has found that Santa employs a Gestapo informants and Troll strikebreakers. There is no free speech at the North Pole. Santa’s sole newspaper, “The Naughty List,”  is overseen by Mrs. Claus, Santa’s head of propaganda.

Santa’s reindeer are worked to death; Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer XVI collapsed from exhaustion when hauling Santa back to the North Pole after his triple bypass surgery. 

Alabaster himself attempted in vain to secure better working conditions for his staff during his tenure as COE.

“Once, I tried to get Pepper Peppermint [an assistant foundry worker] maternity leave so she could take care of her elflings,” Alabaster said. “The Big Guy stomped down, gave a hearty laugh, tore up her contract, confiscated her earnings and deported her by reindeer sled the next morning. She might’ve frozen to death if we didn’t sneak her some Barbie Sweaters and some extra-strength eggnog.” 

Worse, Santa’s many acts of cruelty are varied and wanton. 

On Christmas day in 1911, Santa invited Carnegie and Rockefeller to the North Pole to go muskox hunting. Riding on Vanderbilt’s new steam locomotives, black coal smoke pumping into the white snow, wielding toy BB guns and decorative sabers, the three men mercilessly slaughtered over 2000 muskoxen in a day the elves dubbed “The Massive Muskox Massacre.”

Alabaster’s great-grandpa Bushy Evergreen was outed in “The Naughty List” as a dissenter after he spoke out against Santa’s actions that day. Evergreen died a week later, purportedly falling out of a bobsled into an icy crevasse. His seatbelt was found to be faulty. There were no eyewitnesses. 

But things are starting to change. Whistleblowers are beginning to turn popular opinion against Santa, and children around the world are bravely starting to un-believe in Santa’s jolly facade. 

“Even small acts of defiance help,” Alabaster said. “Santa’s allergic to peanuts, so a kid two blocks down from where I live mixed some of his mom’s ‘Essence of Peanut’ perfume into Santa’s milk last year.” 

Even Mother Nature is helping defy Santa by melting the polar ice caps. If worst comes to worst, Santa’s northern demesne will still be nothing but a giant puddle in 200 years. 

There is hope.

History has proven that Santa’s regime can evolve. Only 800 years ago, Santa was a brutal Mongolion Warlord who conquered half the Northern Hemisphere, dropping through tent flaps to deliver miniature Genghis Khans to children on Christmas Eve. In 1400, Santa returned his conquered lands upon the urgings of several European kings, becoming a feudal lord and renaming himself “The Saint of Nicholas.” In 1700, following the march of capitalism, Santa rebranded himself into the robber baron of today. 

Things are even changing in the heart of Santa’s Workshop. The underground resistance movement Elves Live Free (ELF) is growing stronger as elves garner more sympathy worldwide, and the Internet has helped them disseminate their writings with less fear of Santan oversight, deemed “watchful and responsible care.”

Alabaster himself belonged to the Maoist-Marxist faction of ELF before fleeing the Workshop.

“Workers of the world, unite!” Alabaster shouted, quoting Marx. “We have nothing to lose but our chains!”