Christmas traditions are weird. We all drink mulled wine, even though it’s just microwaved Lidl shiraz with some cumin dropped in; we all eat turkey, even though it’s just a big dry dinosaur chicken; and we all watch the Queen’s speech, even though it’s just Charlie Brooker’s Wipe of the Year without any of the jokes. I mean, it’s fine, but if the Queen was really good, the BBC would have given her a series now instead of 66 consecutive Christmas specials.
It’s clear we need some new festive traditions that sum up Christmas in 21st-century Britain. Last Sunday in a conference centre in St Ives, Cambridgeshire, a magical Christmas moment took place – one that was so special that it really should be commemorated every single year. I’m talking, of course, about Raging Santa.
After hours of tolerating screaming children, bored parents and an inexplicably scheduled rave playing pounding drum’n’bass music next door, a Santa was pushed over the edge of sanity by a fire alarm and succumbed to what can only be described as “the Christmas madness”. As the alarm blared, Santa Claus stormed out of the grotto, tore off his beard and hat and screamed “everyone get the fuck out” at the 50 or so children – a scene I’m fairly sure they cut from the Richard Attenborough Miracle on 34th Street.
Tragically there’s no footage of the incident online which means we have to fill in some of the details ourselves. In my head, the Santa looks a bit like Peter Finch’s TV anchor from Network, picking up baubles and throwing them at children while yelling, “This Santa’s as mad as ho-ho-hell”. Maybe at one point, a smartarse dad quips, “All this yelling isn’t good for your mental elf”, and Santa stabs him in the shoulder with a candy cane.
The company who organised the grotto, Festival Events St Ives (FESt), immediately went into damage limitation mode, releasing a statement that Santa Claus was merely attempting to facilitate the evacuation of the building and had got a little carried away. Which I guess makes sense – although I’ve always thought that if Santa Claus was involved in some kind of emergency situation (fire, earthquake, Santa’s workshop invaded by a group of terrorists a la the opening scene in Scrooged), he’d exude a calm authority that is both reassuring and oddly arousing.
FESt’s statement means it’s now canon that Santa reacts to a fire alarm like that member of staff in the high-vis vest who takes the drills way too seriously – the only thing that could make it worse is the knowledge that Santa was shouting, “Leave your coats, if this was a real fire you’d all be burned to a crisp by now!” as he shepherded sobbing children out.
I can understand the desire to downplay Santa’s fury, but it feels like a missed opportunity. Raging Santa is a modern Christmas story we can all relate to, because overexposure to Christmas fodder cultivates a special kind of impotent anger. Who hasn’t wanted to punch an entire display of Tesco’s Finest Christmas cheese selection boxes just because it’s the fifth time you’ve heard Shakin’ Stevens that morning? Who hasn’t heard a group of amateur carollers murdering “O Holy Night” and wanted to scream, “None of you have the range to pull off that high note!” at them? Who hasn’t wanted to go to hunt down the people who made the cheesy BBC Christmas adverts from a few years ago where they all sang “Consider Yourself” and just sincerely ask them how they sleep at night?
Rather than pretend it didn’t happen, or dismiss it as a Christmas stunt that went wrong, we should lean into it: we should make Raging Santa a new Christmas tradition for every town in Britain. At the start of every December, town councils could find the angriest person in the area, stick them in a Santa suit, and force them to sit in a darkened grotto in a shopping centre while screaming children visit them for hours on end, non-stop Christmas songs blare overhead and heavy bass makes the plastic reindeers vibrate.
The Raging Santa would try to keep their temper for as long as possible, but eventually they’d crack, trashing the grotto in a glorious rampage, tinsel and baubles flying everywhere. The child who pushed Raging Santa over the edge would be given a shiny penny, and the Raging Santa would be given the ultimate prize for a Christmas miser: a tranquiliser dart to the neck that puts them into a coma until 6 January.
Christmas rage is as legitimate as Christmas joy, and Raging Santa is the snarling, feral patron saint that we all need. I can imagine the new Night Before Christmas now: “I heard him exclaim, with a deranged little shout: “Merry Christmas to all, now get the fuck out”.
• Jack Bernhardt is a comedy writer
