World’s too big, Santa scaling back

Originally published 23 December 1996

Dear Friends,

It is with con­sid­er­able regret that I announce that this is the last year I will make my tra­di­tion­al rounds with rein­deer and sleigh.

Believe me, noth­ing has giv­en me more plea­sure over the years than vis­it­ing the homes of each and every child. Not even sooty chim­neys and stale cook­ies have less­ened the joy of leav­ing spe­cial treats under a fes­tive tree. And more than once I have sneaked a peek into a child’s bed­room and observed the sweet bliss of sug­ar-plum dreams. These are things that make the job worthwhile.

How­ev­er, the bur­den of vis­it­ing every house­hold has become too great. When I start­ed this job back in the 4th cen­tu­ry, as St. Nicholas, in a place called Lycia in what is now called Turkey, the pop­u­la­tion of the entire world was 200 mil­lion. Today, the glob­al pop­u­la­tion is approach­ing 6 billion.

Between the time I was born in 350 A.D. and 1830 the pop­u­la­tion grew by 1 bil­lion, a five­fold increase. A cen­tu­ry lat­er, it had grown anoth­er bil­lion. The third bil­lion was added in 30 years, and the fourth in only 15 years. Today, we are adding a bil­lion peo­ple to the plan­et every decade or so.

Every sec­ond, two-and-a-half more tots require San­ta’s atten­tion: 80 mil­lion more vis­its this year than last.

I’m no knee-jerk pop­u­la­tion doom­say­er, and it’s not my place to lec­ture you about the per­ils of an explod­ing pop­u­la­tion. So far, human­i­ty has done a remark­able job keep­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in line with pop­u­la­tion growth, and some of the rea­sons for the surg­ing pop­u­la­tion, such as declin­ing child mor­tal­i­ty, can only be applaud­ed. But as some­one with lots of expe­ri­ence in eth­i­cal eval­u­a­tion, I can­not help but notice stag­ger­ing inequities of well-being.

Many of you live lives of con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion; a great many more have nothing.

While most peo­ple in devel­oped parts of the world don’t feel the pinch of hunger or dis­ease, unchecked pop­u­la­tion growth cer­tain­ly affects qual­i­ty of life. A per­son­al vis­it from San­ta is just one ameni­ty that now must go by the board.

Con­sid­er, too, that in the ear­ly days only Chris­t­ian chil­dren expect­ed my vis­its. Now that Christ­mas has become an inter­na­tion­al sec­u­lar hol­i­day dri­ven by the mar­ket econ­o­my, vast num­bers of non- Chris­t­ian kid­dies are look­ing for gifts. When you work out the num­bers, I have less than a thou­sandth of a sec­ond to vis­it each house­hold on Christ­mas night, and that’s trav­el­ing east to west, fol­low­ing the dark­ness on the rotat­ing Earth.

I won’t bore you with fig­ures for aver­age sleigh veloc­i­ty, G‑stresses, air resis­tance, heat shield­ing, and pay­load. Suf­fice it to say that I’ve dealt with prob­lems that would baf­fle NASA.

All of this with the same small staff of elves, many of whom are get­ting old. Their hearts are good, they strug­gle valiant­ly to keep up, but they live dai­ly with the knowl­edge that these days almost no one even believes in their existence.

So here’s the new plan. Next year, in afflu­ent regions of the world, San­ta’s going on-line. With the help of Amer­i­ca Online, kids can down­load my “Dear San­ta ‘97” cat­a­log at www.santa97.org. They’ll find all the favorites, includ­ing Tick­le-Me-Elmo, Hol­i­day Bar­bie, and Nin­ten­do 64. Due to lim­it­ed demand, I will not be offer­ing books, blocks, tin sol­diers, or lit­tle toy drums.

Your child’s Christ­mas list can be entered on the elec­tron­ic form pro­vid­ed. Be sure to click “Naughty” or “Nice.” By arrange­ment with Fed­er­al Express and Toys-R-Us, appro­pri­ate gifts will be deliv­ered direct­ly from the near­est toy ware­house to your home by spe­cial couri­er on Christ­mas night.

Chil­dren with­out com­put­ers will be catered to at malls and depart­ment stores. I will be giv­ing up the San­ta’s lap rou­tine next year. Instead, kids can have their pic­ture tak­en sit­ting at spe­cial hol­i­day com­put­er ter­mi­nals, key­ing in their list, assist­ed by store staff in rein­deer suits.

Mean­while, the elves and I will focus our atten­tion on those chil­dren who don’t have stock­ings, much less some­thing to put in them. The prob­lem will get worse before it gets bet­ter. Africa will dou­ble its pop­u­la­tion in 25 years, Chi­na in 36 years. In 1950, two of three peo­ple lived in the devel­op­ing world. Today, the num­ber is four out of five, and in 2100 it will be 10 of 11.

About 60 per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion live in coun­tries with a per capi­ta income under $400 per year, and that fig­ure is expect­ed to rise. It is hard to buy Tick­le-Me-Elmo on a fam­i­ly income of $400, much less Nin­ten­do 64.

So you can see I have my hands full. That’s why it has become nec­es­sary to offload much of my tra­di­tion­al rou­tine to com­mer­cial enter­pris­es. For those tens of mil­lions of chil­dren with­out access to com­put­ers, FedEx, and Toys-R-Us, I will try to keep my appoint­ed rounds, with a sleigh full of love and St. Nicholas too.

Peace on Earth, good will to all people.

Yours,

San­ta Claus