Santa's Workshop

David over at Law, Legislation, and Lunacy has a post up that examines the peculiar relationship between Santa and his workforce, the elves. Entitled "Santa the Slaver," it is not particularly flattering towards the Big Man of Christmas.

But can you really blame him for being suspicious of Santa's means? Santa almost by definition lacks transparency, he (as David points out) has no income, and is located in a peculiar part of the world. In addition to that, he commands a vast and completely invisible surveillance network which he uses to determine the behavior of every single Christmas-celebrating child on the planet. Whether he is evil or benign, Santa is not doing himself any favors here.

However, upon considering Santa's odd behavior, two alternative explanations sprung to mind concerning the elves.

The first was what I'll call the Willy Wonka model. Yes, the North Pole hardly seems like an ideal habitat for the elves - but what if where they originally came from was even worse? Wonka rescued the Oompa-Loompas from near-starvation, and pays them in food and lodging. He keeps the factory toasty hot for them, despite the fact that temperatures above 65° can have extremely adverse effects on chocolate manufacturing.

So it could be with Santa and the elves - the elves provide labor for Santa's factories in exchange for food, lodging, and protecting them from the poachers that grind them up to make premium glitter for the wealthy.

Upon further thought, I actually favor a second option; that Santa and his elves are actually two aspects of one superentity.

Think of the parallels between Santa's Workshop and the average termite colony: thousands of workers toiling away with unmatched speed and efficiency, coordinated as small parts of a single organism; an organism that happens to have a massive and distended abdomen. The colony could be milennia old, having originated in the Arctic regions when they were tropical.

These lines from the Night Before Christmas seals the deal for me:

His eyes -- how they twinkled! His dimples how merry!

The compound eyes of an insect can act as small retroreflectors, resulting in twinkling. The fontanelle (or frontal gland pore) of a termite could easily be mistaken for a "dimple" in low light.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf

Santa himself is an elf! This accounts for the difference between Santa and the elves; they're actually small industrious "worker" elves, and the larger "queen" Santa-type elves.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
[...]
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

This passage describes Santa's ability to emit soothing pheremones, probably from his frontal gland port. The "smoke" the author sees is signaling chemicals emitted by Santa to soothe any would-be attackers. The "pipe" is probably an extension of Santa's mandibles, mistaken for a friendly, harmless object in the dim light and while under the influence of Santa's home-spun hallucinogens.

So, "queen"Santa Elves visit homes every year, leaving gifts made out of useless (to them) wood, plastic, and metal. In exchange, they are offered calorie and nutrient-rich cookies and milk to fortify them for the difficult task of birthing the next generation of "worker" elves.

So when children ask you what Santa does with the rest of the year, you can tell them:

He hides in a network of subterranean arctic caverns, laying eggs out of which millions of mandibled, multi-limbed drones will someday hatch to make wooden horses and high-end consumer electronics for the children of the world.

Happy Holidays, everyone!