A Christmas Fable, Past and Future

by Bob Buddemeier

Having survived another holiday season, as we gaze into the future we see the ominous shadow of a soon-to-be recurring seasonal dilemma: the fate of Santa’s workshop, stables, seasonal labor housing, and luxury mansion (he has to be a trillionaire to give away all those gifts, so he’s not going to live in a single-wide, is he?). The thing is, the traditional location of all of this is the North Pole, which means that Santaville is perched on a layer (maybe 6-10’) of ice that floats about 14,000 feet above the floor of the Arctic Ocean. That has to support the whole enterprise – livestock, infrastructure, permanent and seasonal helpers, energy resources for 6 months of 24/7 darkness, etc.

The implications are extreme. Global Climate Change is warming the ocean and the air, and the rate of Arctic warming is 4-5 times greater than the rate for the rest of the planet. A summertime ice-free Arctic could happen on a time scale of years. Ker-splash. 

We tend to think of Santaville as something occurring in winter, at the extreme of snow season (e.g., at right). But it’s not Brigadoon; it doesn’t appear on Christmas eve and vanish on Boxing Day.  The elves are working their tiny tails off year around to fill up the toy warehouses, which means that ice is an essential support at all times. BUT, it is going away (compare Sep 24 with Sep 94 below – less abundant and thinner). Thinner ice and less of it is all that floats between Santaville and 14,000’ of ice water.

The worker elves are busily constructing pontoon barges to provide enough solid surface for manufacturing and animal husbandry, but it looks like Santa is going to have to scale back the mansion, and there is no hope of having a long enough solid surface for the reindeer to have an adequate take-off and landing strip. Marine, or at least amphibious, operations seem inevitable. ElfStrong, Santa’s elite security force, has recruited a detachment of marines, the Real Seals. Fortunately, there turned out to be no truth to the rumor that ElfStrong was going to occupy Murmansk while the Russians were distracted.

Initial negotiations with COMSUBPAC as a possible replacement for NORAD in Santa tracking seem to be trending favorably, which could solve the thorny pole-to-continent transition problem. However, issues remain to be resolved with regard to cross-beach launch trajectories and delivery of soluble treats. Concern about leaving lots of wet and salty hoofprints across the rooftops provoked consideration of hiring some of the many unemployed polar bears instead of reindeer (on Growler, on Bruin…). However, the bears’ predilection for raiding garbage cans rendered the approach problematic, so it was with great relief that Santa’s staff discovered that reindeers knew how to swim.

Sadly, Rudolph has been laid off due to the strong absorption of red light by seawater, and headhunters (not trophy hunters) are scouring the Northland for blue-nosed reindeer. The marine mode of travel, however, does provide Santa with an extra coating of protection against the thoughtless householders who leave a fire burning in their fireplace.

Finally, in view of the hazards of climate change and the pressing need for decarbonization, Santa will henceforth be gifting naughty children with small silicon panels instead of lumps of coal.

Let us all hope that arrangements can be made to defuse the existential threat posed by climate change to our precious cultural Christmas traditions so that we may wish happy future Christmases to all, and may your New Years be rewarding to whatever degree circumstances permit.

Reindeer know how to swim!