On the twenty fourth of December, at the stroke of midnight, Santa Clause stole Christmas.
It wasn’t Santa himself, of course. As ever, it was just an ordinary man dressed up as Santa, who rode his bicycle off a fifth avenue skyscraper, and quickly formed a red and white bearded puddle on the sidewalk below.
The bicycle was sold at an auction.
An investigation was made into the man’s identity. No one could find anything. The only clue was a squashed substance found in Santa suit pocket that may have once been a hamster. No one offered a theory to why a man would cycle off a skyscraper with a hamster, dressed as Father Christmas, for fear of being suspected of similar inclinations, so that lead was left alone. An office worker in one of the skyscraper’s higher floors tried telling people that he heard the Santa cry “high ho” as he dropped by the window, but no one wanted to listen.
People tried to move on, but when Christmas came round again the next year, no one was really up for it. Everyone was haunted by the image of Santa Clause flying across the Manhattan skyline on a bicycle, his arms raised, spread wide; a hamster nestled snugly in his pocket.
Some made an effort to go through the motions of the season, but that was all ended when a midget, dressed as an elf, cycled off an apartment block on 64th street, clearing the street below, and crashing down into Central Park.
The Chief of Police appeared on television in the early hours of the morning, visibly shaken up, announcing that a hamster substance had been found in the puddle of midget. The Times ran its weakest headline in years – “Copy-Prat Suicide,” indicating the distress of even the city’s journalists. The festively decorated, yet mangled, bicycle was melted down.
Christmas hasn’t been mentioned since. Last week, some idiot on a skateboard crashed down on Broadway, dressed as Spiderman. He had a hamster strapped to his inside forearm, but no one cared. It doesn’t really matter now, anyway.
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