December 2: After creating some seriously interesting multiverses out in the 36th Dimension, God returns to his favourite cloud near Earth for some R&R. He plonks down in front of the telly and flips on a movie channel, which features an early Christmas film about a homeless boy and his dog who discover the true meaning of Christmas thanks to the intervention of , you guessed it, Santa Clause. A bit soppy and melodramatic, but it moves God to tears and He decides, on an impulse, to create this Santa Clause in real life. "If Hollywood can make movies that touching, they deserve a bit of real Christmas magic," the Almighty declares.
  December 3 - 4: After some early experimentation, God decides to base His Santa design on Coca-Cola's image of a fat, white man in a red suit, trimmed with white fur. He builds a workshop in the North Pole, endows Santa and his team of magical elves with the production capacity to create 145,000 tonnes of (mainly) plastic toys. Capable of transforming themselves into subsonic streaks of fairydust, the Elves are dispatched throughout the planet to determine precisely the level of toy demand in each country. On his Big Brother screens, Santa begins widespread, simultaneous surveillance of all children from Christian / atheist-post-Christian capitalist ethnic backgrounds, in order to determine "who has been naughty or nice". Preparations begin for meeting the children's demands.
December 12: Parents in Western countries begin contacting local police authorities when their kids' letters to Santa are answered by anonymous sources. Forensic analysis determines the letters are all written on the same unique parchment, and in the same handwriting, using a genuine quill pen. This sparks a media frenzy. Panicked parents worried about home security, decide to keep their children out of school until the pranksters can be found.  
December 15: Scientists working at the Stanley arctic space station pick up heat signatures from Santa's Workshop. US satellites confirm a large, unknown structure shaped like a giant toy house. A Wikileaks DoD cable spreads like wildfire across the internet: Santa actually exists.  
December 16: Google Earth starts transmitting images of the Workshop. The evidence is corroberated by numerous reports of elves preparing sleigh landing sites for the Big Day. The world - and not just children - starts to believe Santa actually exists. God, meanwhile, departs for greener pastures, very pleased with what He has set in motion here.  

December 16 - 18: The worst weekend of retail sales since the Great Depression, as parents in the US, throughout Europe and in many other rich countries - already hurting from the Financial Crisis - decide to stay at home and allow the real Santa Clause to do the shopping for them. At the same time, the evidence of the existence of a Christian-based supernatural presence sparks riots in many Muslim countries, who begin to see what was once a harmless superstition as a geniune threat to their faith. Persecution of Christians in Egypt, Syria and Turkey reaches critical levels, with Coptic and Orthodox churches being burnt across the Middle East.  
December 21: The dire retail performance leads to snap announcements from big box retailers in the US of mass lay-offs before Christmas. US unemployment climbs to 11% and the December rate of new eviction notices reaches new highs.  
December 16-20: China sees its export orders cut in half from Walmart, Woolworth, Argos and other mass Western distribution chains. Overnight, factories across the People's Republic are forced to close their doors. Millions of Chinese workers find themselves out on the street, facing into a bitter winter.  
December 21: Mass strikes in China lead to violent confrontations in the country's capital. The Communist regime sees its tenuous grip on power as under threat. Desperately, they seek a populist move to divert attention from the mounting domestic unease. Prime Minister Wu orders a snap mobilisation of the country's impressive military forces.  


December 22: President Obama faces loud bipartisan calls to act against the economic threat posed by the north pole Workshop to America's retailers. Two minutes from his address to Congress and a call comes in on the Red Phone from the Pentagon: Chinese forces have landed on Taiwan.  
December 23: International trade is frozen as the US Pacific fleet mobilises in the China Sea. Prime Minister Wu warns the US against any interventions, threatening a nuclear response if China is attacked. Three US drones are shot down, while thousands of Chinese nationals are arrested in the US on suspicion of spying. Meanwhile, in the EU, the unrest and economic disaster of the failed Christmas retail season unhinge the already unstable euro currency. Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Ireland declare a sovereign default on their euro-denominated debt. This triggers bank runs in France and Germany and, late in the evening, after walking out of a Council meeting with EU heads of government in Brussels, German chancellor Angela Merkel declares Germany is unilaterally withdrawing from the single currency and reinstating the Deutschmark. Shocked by the potential adverse consequences this could have on an ill-prepared and heavily exposed France, Sarkozy decides on emergency measures. On a secure line on his way back to Paris, he calls in a special unit force to intercept Merket before she leaves Brussels and take her to Paris.
December 24: (0100 hours, local time) After mishearing commands from the USS Democracy, flight lieutenant Rick Peters unleashes a battery of tactical air-to-air missiles at a Chinese fighter jet he was tracking in his F-15. The Chinese plane is blown out of the air. Shortly after, his jet is shot down by a ground-to-air missile launched from a Chinese sub. US forces respond by torpedoeing the sub, provoking a barrage of missile fire from coastal batteries positioned in and around Taiwan. The USS Rhode Island, USS Spirit of St Louis and the USS Plymouth are all sunk, most of the crew lost. The Pentagon responds with missile strikes on Chinese military and infrastructral targets. When the news of these reaches Beijing, Chinese nationalist rioters storm the US embassy and beat to death most of the embassy staff, before police can restore order.  
December 24 (0100 hours, local time) When news of Merkel's capture reaches Berlin, a shocked German government attempts to contact President Sarkozy and find a diplomatic solution before the press finds out. Too late, by 0700 hours the news has gone viral, leaked by a trainee in the Bundestag, Ms Ulrike Fassbender, whose former boyfriend had been French. Paris wants Merkel's release on condition that the Germans agree to remain in the euro and share the debt burden from the PIIGS defaults. But by early morning, public pressure in Berlin is spiralling out of control. Already, thousands have taken to the streets, burning effigies of Sarkozy dressed as Napoleon. The Germans demand their Chancellor be returned immediately, threatening retaliation if she is not delivered safely. French diplomatic staff are seized. By 1700, anti-German sentiment in France has reached fever pitch. A group of German Christmas shoppers in the popular border town of Strasbourg are badly beaten by local crowds. Some escape across the Europe Bridge, but are pursued by the mob. German police on the bridge fire into the French crowd, leaving four French civilians killed and nearly a dozen badly wounded. By 1900 Sarkozy has ordered a mobilisation of French army forces to secure the safety of French citizens living near the German border. The Belgian government, meanwhile, has officially protested the entry by France of military forces and the seizure of Merkel on its soil. It too has closed its border.  

December 25: Christmas morning. China has launched a nuclear strike on Los Angeles, San Diego, San Fransico and Seattle, just as Santa's sleigh touches down on the snow covered roof of the Anderson Family home in Houlton, Maine (Santa's first stop in the US). Major flaws in the quality of work delivered by corrupt and incompetent defence contractors is revealed, as the US missile shield fails completely to stop the Chinese missiles. Most of the US west coast is engulfed in nuclear armaggedon. Meanwhile, back over on the East Coast, the Anderson family - glued to FOX news since the previous morning, with guns in their hands - has completely forgotten about Christmas, and when Dan Anderson hears the sounds of hooves alighting on  the roof, he opens fire with a pump-action shot gun, shooting straight through the roof tiles. Reindeer blood drips down through the holes Anderson blows in his own roof.
The US meanwhile, has retaliated with a barrage of interballistic missiles against civilian targets in China, most of which are however intercepted, (as Chinese spies have advanced knowledge of the trajectories). However, a second barrage of tactical missiles launched from US nuclear powered subs hits major population centres across China's coast. Convinced the prevailing winds will carry the radiation eastward, France nukes Berlin and moves its forces into Aachen, Saarbrücken, Karlsruhe and Heidelberg, encountering only minimal resistance from the poorly organised and non-mobilised local German forces.  
January 6: The real Santa is shot by panicked locals outside Houlton Maine, as he runs through the woods. As a result only 219,887 of the 431,567,926 presents produced in his Workshop are actually delivered by magical sleigh (Mostly in the maritime provinces of Canada). In all, 315 million are killed in World War Three, which will come to be known as the Ho Ho Ho War, with hundreds of millions more suffering radiation poisoning and likely to die in the months and years to come. The US ceases to exist as a sovereign nation, with breakaway states declaring independence in order to escape the economic and physical mess. The chaos in China is far worse - warlord conditions will soon return and years of lawless chaos will ensue. Germany has surrendered to France and while much of Europe is spared the worst of the war (Merkel is pardoned for her 'war crimes'), the economic consequences are dire for all, not to mention the nuclear fallout which will circle the earth in waves of cancer enducing fog, for several hundred years to come.  

God, meanwhile, just shakes His head on the whole mess and puts the thing down to experience. He goes back to the 36th Dimension to check on some of his creations out there, which appear much more promising that the early models He made on Earth and its equally-doomed 5th dimensional twin planet Xentuyeowoxin, where God made the mistake of creating a real-life Tooth Fairy.


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