The Myth of Santa
by Ian Downey

Part One
Far, far back in the unrecorded areas of human history, there once was an ancient civilization known as Thule, just as technologically advanced as we are now, and which contained many prosperous factories. The owners of these factories decided to make them even more prosperous by breeding perfect workers to work in the factories. They created a new race of workers and passed the Golden Law, which said that the new workers could breed only with each other, to become totally purebred. They bred their workers to be smaller than normal people, so that they would be more easily controlled (and so that they would fit into small spaces), but very strong and with great physical endurance and great resistance to pain. They also bred them to be very obedient, kind, friendly, generous, forgiving, happy, incapable of rage, ingeniously creative, efficient, tireless, and above all extremely hard working. The new species they created were a little bit different than the humans they had once been (and whom they replaced in the factories) and became known as Elves.

The Elves proved to be truly great workers, and rebuilt the factories with fantastic machines that automatically produced everything that they and the factory owners needed – thus making the jobs of the Elves themselves unnecessary. But the Elves’ breeding made them want to keep on working, even after the machines produced every necessity, and so the elves began to innovate new products. At first, they simply made the old products more and more enjoyable to use, but soon they began to make products that had no real use, and fulfilled no real necessity, but existed only for the sake of pure enjoyment. These they called “toys,” and they were the very first toys that the world had ever seen. The factory owners so loved the toys, that some of them came to do nothing but play with toys, day and night. Thus, everyone was happy for a while: the factory owners were happy to play, and the Elves were happy to work. The Elves also traveled around the world looking for ideas for new products. Stopping briefly in France, they invented Champaign, which increased peoples’ happiness a bit.

But even though the factory owners did not know it, they were breeding themselves while they bred the Elves. There were many more Elves than owners, and because of the Golden Law, the owners had to mate with each other, in a very small group, and became more and more inbred. In addition, the competition between the owners was very intense, as each owner was trying to take over their competitors’ factories. An owner who lost his factory was in a very difficult situation, having never worked, spending all his days playing, and thus unable to compete with the Elves in getting a job. Many of the dispossessed owners died of starvation. The gene pool of the owners became smaller and smaller, and the inbred bosses soon had mutated into a new species – the Gnomes.

Gnomes were nasty, greedy, fiercely competitive creatures, and the struggle for power between the remaining Gnomes became all the more desperate as fewer and fewer of them came to own more and more. Only the strongest, the meanest, the most bitter and merciless survived, and this made the environment all the more harsh. Adapting to this new violent environment, some of the gnomes actually became murderous and even cannibalistic. They were also very crafty and canny, and constantly thought up new schemes to fool each other. They therefore eventually became aware that they had involuntarily been genetically engineering themselves, and instead of recoiling in horror at the prospect, immediately began thinking of ways in which they could use this to their own advantage. Gnomic scientists began extracting the genetic codes of other animals, and splicing them into their own codes, to make themselves fiercer competitors. They mainly used the DNA of cattle and bears. They therefore became quite strong, so that they could fight each other more easily.

Eventually, after all the fighting was over, there was only one Gnome left, the meanest, nastiest, most clever and scheming Gnome of all, and he owned absolutely everything. His name was Peter Economicus, and he also known by many other names: Black Peter, Zwarte Piet, Rumpelklas, Buzebergt, Hans Muff, and so on. Upon taking over Thule, Economicus named himself King, and wore a great red furry Kingly robe, with a white sash from his left shoulder to his right hip. Economicus was a cruel master, always walking around town carrying a long black whip, and beating anyone who didn’t work hard enough.

Economicus had two problems. First of all, he was very very lonely, being the only Gnome in the world. Second of all, he was very very much afraid of dying, after which there would be no Gnomes left at all. His first thought was to find a human woman to fall in love with and marry, and hopefully they could have children that would be at least half-Gnome. But as he traveled, no humans seemed to like him or be attracted to him, with his withered, ugly, slightly greenish, hunchbacked frame, and his mean, nasty disposition. So he went back home and came up with a new plan.

Now Economicus decided to study magic, and to become a powerful magician. He grew older, studying and studying all day, locked away in his mansion, while the Elves made toys all around. As he got older and older, he got more afraid of dying, and decided that if no one liked him and there was no way for him to have a child, then he would develop the magical formula for immortality and live forever. As he grew a long white beard and long white hair, walking by leaning on a staff, he slowly developed a kind of magic that is based on magical plants and herbs, especially ones that grow where it is very cold, and was usually seen carrying a scythe, with which to harvest them, carrying them in a magical bag that could contain an infinite amount. He moved to the top of a cold, cold mountain where such plants grow. To keep himself from getting too cold in his weak old age, he needed to learn to control the snow and weather. So he bred a form of holly with magical powers. Eating a sprig of this holly, he gave himself great powers over the snow and weather. He also began to create hideous monster trees that were capable of moving and attacking passers-by, and used them as his guards. Finally, he learned to make himself invisible, so that he could spy on his employees, and they learned to call him “the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace.”

And indeed, after much hard work, he developed the formula for immortality. By cross-breeding many plants, he re-created the Tree of Life from the Garden of Eden, which produces one fruit every 500 years. He ate this fruit and instantly became immortal, and lived hundreds of years, withering and wrinkling more and more. (The discarded core of the fruit was eaten by a little groundhog that was poking around in his trash, and this groundhog, too, became immortal, though only essentially immortal, having eaten only the seeds and stem – thus the groundhog is continuously reincarnated. For millennia, Economicus tried to keep it out of the garbage, but always failed, since it could not be killed.) A side effect of the immortality juice was that he also sometimes selectively lost his memory, completely forgetting events that had occurred to him, much like Peter Pan (In fact, since one of his names was Black Peter… could the two of these stories be somehow related?).

Meanwhile the Elves all around, no matter how kind and generous and obedient they were, were beginning to get fed up with Economicus, who, locked away in his castle, wasn’t even taking care of their needs for food and shelter. The civilization of Thule had essentially collapsed, and the industry no longer produced what it had in years past, under his foolhardy despotism. So some of them tried to rise up and overthrow him, but were surprised to find that their own arms and legs disobeyed them when they tried, and began punching and kicking each other instead. It had to be some kind of magical spell that Economicus had cast! Defeated, they gave up, but even so, they began to whisper tales of The One who would save them from Economicus’s tyranny. This foretold savior would be a mighty King of the Elves, a kind, benevolent King, who would topple Economicus and free his people. They called this Messiah “Santa” and began to whisper, then shout and sing a warning to Economicus: “Santa will nail you!” which eventually became “Santa’ll nail’ya” and eventually “Santanalia.” The revolutionaries among the Elves had secret signs with which they knew each other: special costumes with which no one could recognize them, including little pointed elf hats, and special devices they blew into to make coded noises only they understood.

As Economicus aged, he continued his studies and became more and more powerful. He tired of redirecting the cold and wind, and magically adapted himself to withstand all cold comfortably. Indeed, he would magically make it colder everywhere he went, actually preferring it to warmth. Like the changing of the seasons, people knew he was coming when a cold wind started to blow, and when he left, they’d notice new sprouts of holly and other plants. They identied him with winter itself, and he therefore became known as the Winter Warlock, sometimes nicknamed “Jack Frost.”

But Economicus was still lonely. So he decided to use his magic to find himself a bride. High atop his magical mountain, he built himself a magical crystal snowball, with which he could see all things in the world, and even see a little bit into the past and future. The snowball also talked and gave him advice. Then he charmed some reindeer with some magic feed corn, giving them the power of flight, and strapped them to his sled. Whipping them, he trained them to be his sled team. Now he looked through his crystal snowball, looking for a woman to be his bride. When he would find a beautiful maiden, he would swoop down in his flying sled and try to capture her, and then try to force her to love and marry him. But women of course hated to be captured like this and soon ran away.

Now he had another, more subtle plan: he covered a great pine-tree with peppermint sticks, candies, toys, and other goodies, leaving little gifts underneath to try to lure young women toward the tree and towards him. Every woman stayed away except a blind woman named Sarah, who smelled the candy and was lured. She stayed with him a little longer, and he even convinced her that she loved him for a while, until she, too realized how horrible he was and ran away. But unbeknownst to him, Sarah was pregnant, and we’ll find out what happened to her child later on.

Now Economicus came up with his final plan. Using his magical powers over the snow, he built himself a beautiful snow-woman. This was the first time that anyone had ever built a snowman or snow-woman. He then took the threads from a magical cotton-like plant and wove them into a magical black hat, which he placed on her head. She instantly came to life. He decided to name her “Icy,” but because she had not yet learned to pronounce words correctly, she called herself “Ivy,” and she is known by both names.

Icy the Snow-woman was the very opposite of Economicus: she was kind, loving, sweet, playful, and generous. Right away she took pity on Economicus, because she saw how little love was in his heart. But for the same reason, she did not want to marry him, and tried to run away.

Now Economicus was angry. Using his magical arts, he caused some plants to grow into a magical house, mostly the shell of a pumpkin, completely covered with ivy and holly, with a great wreath for a door. Then he carried Ivy through the threshold and whispered a magical phrase, whereupon the wreath magically grew itself shut. Since Economicus is also known as Black Peter, this is the origin of the song,

“Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater, Had a wife but couldn’t keep her. He put her in a pumpkin shell, And there he kept her very well.”

Finally Economicus tricked Ivy into eating a little bit of magical mistletoe, which caused her to see directly into his soul and to find the little bit of good still there. She immediately fell in love with him, and they got married, with the crystal snowball officiating.

Joy only increased his magical abilities, and Economicus was now at the height of his powers. He soon found that he could fly even without his sled, he could change his form almost at will, and he could change the structure of reality. He even boasted that he was now equal to a god.

The mistletoe had another effect and that very night, December 24th, at the midnight that begins the 25th, Ivy became pregnant. Not only that, but hers was a magical pregnancy that lasted only one week long!

Back in his castle, on the evening of the 31st, Economicus consulted his crystal snowball, which told him that his son, with whom Ivy was now pregnant, would be the one prophesized by all the Elves. The crystal snowball explained further that this child would take away Economicus’s wealth and power, and even some of his magic.

Enraged, Economicus didn’t know what to do. Back in the pumpkin, Ivy was already giving birth. The old, wrinkled man ran in, without even taking the time to put on his robe, wearing little more than his white sash and his underwear. On finding the newly born boy, he didn’t know what to do. He knew that the boy would have inherited his immortality and much of his magical power, and so he couldn’t either kill him with conventional weapons or destroy him with his own magic. So he did the unthinkable: he grabbed the little baby boy and swallowed him whole, thinking that he was now forcing the boy to live out his days deep inside his own stomach!

Ivy shrieked in sorrow and terror. Economicus gave a triumphant, evil laugh, left the pumpkin, put on his red fur cloak, and started ascending through the sky, drunk on his own sense of power, laughing all the way. Higher and higher he flew, surveying the land of Thule, where he was now unquestioned master.

But then he began to feel something… a little rumble in his stomach, which grew and grew. His stomach got bigger and bigger. He seemed to have some kind of terrible indigestion. Now his stomach was expanding rapidly, so that in his fur coat, he began to look like a great red ball. Larger and larger he grew, and his ascent through the sky slowed, as though under some enormous weight. With the white sash flapping in the air around it, the great red ball of Economicus’s body began to resemble the planet Saturn and its rings. Now he was falling, faster and faster, growing all the while to enormous proportions. Finally, at the very stroke of midnight, his stomach hit the ground and BANG!!!!!!!!

…smashed into a million pieces, tiny blue shards of pure magical power, which flew everywhere, covering everything, every house and tree, which lit up all different colors…..

…sending poor old Economicus flying around the sky like a balloon whose air has just been let out….

…and standing right in the spot where he had hit the ground was the tiny little baby that would someday grow up to be Santa Claus.

Part II

Santa Claus was born on December 31th, 501 B.C., which makes him one of the figures of the Axial Age, which also includes his contemporaries, the early Greek Philosophers (Thales, Heracleitus, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, and so on), Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha), Zarathustra (or Zoroaster), Confucius, and, according to some accounts, Lao Tzu, among others. From birth, he was a kind, generous soul, who loved children. When Economicus’s stomach burst open, revealing Santa, all the Elves tooted their noise makers triumphantly to herald the anointed one, their new King. They rushed into the mansion, found all of Economicus’s magic books, and tore them into tiny pieces, throwing them everywhere – the very first use of confetti.

Well, old Economicus wasn’t killed in the explosion – he’s immortal, after all, and cannot die – but he was severely weakened, and lost most of his magical powers. He was stuck in an extra large size, unable to change shape, though his burst stomach healed in time, at a size proportional to his body. The spell was broken, and the elves rose up and took over their factories, leaving his high mountain and expelling Economicus from town among wild cheers for Baby Santa. Economicus, hideously deformed by the accident and now looking truly monstrous, withdrew into the woods, and went to live high up on the mountain again alone. The Elves took Ivy’s magic hat and used it to build many more snowmen to life to keep her company (you can see this little snowman village in Raymond Brigg’s “The Snowman”). But one day a gust of wind (no doubt under the influence of Economicus) blew the hat away, only to be discovered centuries later by the children who built Frosty.

* * *

Meanwhile, in human lands, Sarah, the blind woman, had raised her child to become a man by the name of Burgermeister Meisterburger. The Burgermeister had inherited the leadership skills of his father, and was soon elected mayor of his village, known as Sombertown. He knew all about his Gnomic heritage, and it disgusted him. He wanted to be nothing like his father, or like the Gnome race from which he had come. In the Burgermeister’s mind, the problem with the Gnomes had been that they were too idle- that they spent all their days playing, and never working. Since they didn’t make a living themselves, they had to exploit the Elves, and live off of the Elves’ labor, and that was how they became so cruel. He was particularly offended by the Gnomes’ habit of playing with toys, and he wanted to prevent the humans in his towns from slowly turning into Gnomes themselves. As soon as he became mayor, therefore, the Burgermeister made a solemn law against the use of all toys.

Knowing that Economicus was still alive, and probably desired revenge, Ivy became concerned about Baby Santa’s safety. So she decided to let him be raised far away from Economicus, by his half-brother, the Burgermeister.

The next part of the story has been recounted in the TV Christmas special, “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.” Baby Santa was delivered to the Burgermeister’s doorstep, but the Burgermeister refused to raise him, and sent him away to an orphan asylum. But on the course of this journey a gust of wind (the work of Economicus?) blew him off course, where he was led by small animals to the Elf Village. He was taken in by a family of Elves, the Kringles, who named him Kris.

The Elves were free now, but they were in a difficult situation, for their genetic predisposition led them to keep on making toys, even though there was no boss to tell them what to make or to sell the manufactured items to a distributor. Therefore, they were simply making piles and piles of unused toys. As Kris (Santa) grew up in the Kringle household, he had an idea: to ride a sleigh over to the human village and distribute the toys himself. But when he arrived, the Burgermeister’s law prevented him from giving the toys to the children. Still, he heroically defied the law and became public enemy number 1. In the process, he met a schoolteacher named Jessica, with whom he fell in love and later married. We now know her as Mrs.Claus. She became quite an expert in baking cookies, and Santa slowly grew to be a great cookie aficionado.

Exiled from Sombertown, Santa met up with his father, the Winter Warlock, though neither of them recognized the other. Santa offered Economicus a gift, which instantly melted the giant monster’s heart and turned him from evil to good. He is therefore no longer called the Winter Warlock, but rather Old Man Winter. In trade for toys, Winter decided to give his son many gifts, including the crystal snowball, the sleigh and its reindeer, the magic bag, and much else. (In some traditions, Old Man Winter became Santa’s servant at this point, but most think it would hardly be appropriate for a father to be his own son’s servant.) Though they were caught by the Burgermeister, they escaped and Santa relocated, with Jessica and all the Elves, to the North Pole. Old Man Winter went home, and since his heart had melted, he befriended the little groundhog that he had chased lo these many years. The groundhog, having lived in fear of Economicus for so many years, was understandably skittish, and has been said to be even afraid of his own shadow. But Old Man Winter loves his groundhog, whom he calls “Punxatawny Phil,” and if he can’t find him running around after Groundhog’s day, he’ll spend weeks looking for him and making everyone cold in the process.

* * *

After Santa, Jessica, and the Elves left, Winter was good and kind for a while. But the genetic predispositions of his Gnomic nature eventually got the better of him, without Santa to “cheer” him up, and his heart re-froze. Eventually the Burgermeister caught up with Old Man Winter and told him the whole story as he knew it – including the fact that Santa was Winter’s son. Economicus was infuriated, having given aid and comfort to his sworn enemy. In a rage he flew into town and immediately began using whatever strength and magical powers he had left to disrupt everything, searching for Santa. Terrified, the Burgermeister ran away, never to be seen again. (He left a family with many children, and they lived and prospered and intermarried with other people, so that Gnomic genes can be found in a surprisingly large portion of the human populace, especially among Caucasians. It is widely believed that his distant descendent was Ebenezer Scrooge.)

The people of Sombertown, afraid of Winter’s mighty powers, surrendered to him and told him they would do anything he asked as long as he stopped destroying their town. Seeing this as a chance to regain the power he had lost so long ago, he accepted their deal and became King once more. Using his powers over the winter weather and ice, Economicus built a great Ice Palace for himself, and he made it so cold that its great columns were unbreakable. Then he set his monster trees out to guard the place.

Word got back to Santa that the Winter Warlock had taken over, so he flew on his sleigh back, just outside Sombertown.

Now, in those days, people used to hang their stockings, or socks, over the fireplace to dry them out and keep them warm. Santa decided to sneak into peoples’ houses, through their chimneys, and to put coal in their stockings (along with a few toys). Then, once everybody had some coal, a great rebellion ensued. The townspeople threw their coal at the base of Winter’s palace, until a great pile had accumulated. Then they set the coals on fire, and the palace melted. The trees, who, being made of wood were all quite flammable, became terrified and ran away.

What happened next is a matter of some debate. According to some versions, he fought Economicus, or scared him away, and some even say that he picked up Economicus’s own whip and chased him out of town with it, freeing the people. (In the Netherlands, to this day, they have yearly celebrations reliving this event, in which Santa Claus, or Sinterklaas, as he is known there, chases Black Peter, or Zwarte Piet, with a whip.) But most people think of Santa as too gentle and kindly to do a thing like that, and say that Santa gave Winter a present, re-melting his heart – indeed, that he had to repeat this every year. From then on, it became a tradition to buy things as offerings to Economicus, to appease him and keep his heart warm (being a former factory owner, Economicus’s heart is warmed when products are being bought and sold). Santa has also inherited his father’s forgetfulness, and sometimes forgets to appease Winter, which begins Economicus’s transformation back into a monster. It is understood that Economicus has a dual nature, and this is explained by the Gnomic genetic engineering that went on before his birth. His kind, benevolent nature is understood as coming from his gentle bovine heritage, whereas his fierce, warlike, carnivore-like dominating side is explained by his bear genes.

For many years, Santa forgot to appease Winter, and so Winter transformed into the Abominable Snowmonster, until he was brought back to Christmas Headquarters on the North Pole by Rudolf’s friends (see the tv Christmas special, “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer” for details). Santa can also see you in his crystal snowball, and know if you’re being bad or good, and if you’re bad, he’ll put coal in your stocking to remind you not to be like Economicus. To this day, the Elves still chant “Santa’ll nail ya,” but this has more of a festive meaning, promising sexual adventures and other ways of increasing Cheer, as well as the element within all of us that is like Economicus.