It’s been so long that my childhood is barely a blip in my brain, but I’d like to think I was a rather intelligent wunderkind, aside from the drywall shattering temper tantrums.

Are children these days really this oblivious to the falsities that bestow the modern day Santa Claus?

I suppose it’s rather obvious, since a child can still be lured into a tinted window Astrovan with a Tootsie pop. You know the slogan. I don’t even have to go there.

Kids should be frightened of this bearded creep. We teach them at a young age that magic isn’t real, monsters don’t exist, flight is impossible, etc. Keep your dreams grounded.

We go on to create this mystical pudgy human-form who looks like an inflated member of ZZ Top that shimmies down your chimneys while you’re sleeping and steals your baked goods and milk. Anything but the precious milk!

On that note, do not let me wake up without milk in the fridge. If Santa Claus stole all my milk, I swear I would shoot him in the forehead.

So when I enter dwellings through their roof cavity, I get the entire Rochester police department after me, but this man gets away without a whim. Does Kris Kringle not fit the profile of majority of the FBI’s ‘Most Wanted’ list?

Santa Claus also has the ability to fly, the only human being on record to do so without the aid of propellers, propulsive heat or a jet engine.

This fabled creature is the biggest monstrosity history has ever imposed on the fragile mind of the youth.

If Santa is at the mall everyday, how does he have time to build all his toys? He wouldn’t even have the time to peruse Amazon for the little snot-nosed ones.

Oh, his elves. Elves, which are dwarfed in size, are essentially the same stature as a child. I never knew the North Pole shared laws similar to communist China.

Fact: Santa promotes child labor.

And if Santa is at the mall, how is he simultaneously at McDonald’s, O’Connor’s, and upstairs in mommy’s bedroom during daddy’s nine-to-five?

What is this man? What sadistic demon have we created and are spoon-feeding to the children?

A wise principle to impose upon an eggshell mind would be honesty. Hopefully I’ll never curse this world with kids to implement this, but logic tells me this would be a good moral fiber to inflict on a child.

Instead we lie. The backlash of this fictional character will come back to bite the asses of parents one day, in the form of harsh sarcasm and early retirement home placement.

We shouldn’t need to lie to children to create the omnipotent Santa Claus. Let’s sit down and be honest with them.

“Bobby, Mandy … Mommy and I bought your presents, not Santa Claus. See, Christmas is a time where you spend a bunch of money on presents, which will in time cut down significantly on your college funds, but you’ll get instant gratification from this fully automatic nerf gun that will get shoved in your closet within two weeks to house dust and strains of influenza. Merry Christmas.”

That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now we just have to come up with a viable plot about for why we got a replacement puppy since our first one ‘ran away.’