Now, I don’t think I ever actually believed in Santa. The closest I came was a slow-burning conviction that his name was Santa Sauce because he was, in some sense, actually a marinara-ladled meatball given life and laugh and beard. I don’t think that counts, really—certainly a meatball could never hold a sleigh’s reins, or operate a multinational corporation—so I'll claim that I knew from day zero that Santa was, strictly speaking, a kind of lie.

But he's a useful lie. One that parents can deploy to effectively trick children into not behaving like tiny sociopaths who are too short to drive themselves to school. (Imagine attempting to get full [...]

"A man who sometimes likes to dress as Santa Claus continues to haunt Berlin Christmas markets this week, offering drinks spiked with what is believed to be the drug liquid ecstasy to unsuspecting revelers. Police have been trying to hunt down the man the tabloid press here have dubbed 'Bad Santa' for over a week now, and on Wednesday they released a composite sketch of the suspect based on descriptions provided by witnesses."

Is this Britain's longest serving Santa Claus? Sure, why the hell not.