2. Literally Anyone Can Fill In For Santa
Following on from the previous entry, let’s consider the unlikely scenario that Santa is out of commission for some ridiculous reason (like being arrested for operating a sleigh without a license or stuck in the North Pole’s bathroom after too much eggnog). In that situation, how exactly would the world’s presents get delivered? Well, don’t worry: it turns out that absolutely anyone can do the job.
Movies like The Santa Clause explore this in greater depth, but it pops up with alarming regularity. With Santa somehow unable to fulfill his festive duties, some normal person (occasionally a child) steps up and does the job, flying the sleigh around the world to bring Christmas to all the hopeful girls and boys blissfully unaware of how much danger Christmas is in. Pretty lucky, right?
It’s certainly a pretty dumb Christmas movie trope, not least because it implies that either Santa isn’t particularly special (if his magic is something that anyone can use to do the same job) or that the protagonist has secretly been taking sleigh-flying lessons throughout the year. It effectively reduces the magic of Christmas to a shrug and a sparkle, and it undermines Santa Claus’s image to the children patiently awaiting his arrival. It’s a trope that’s as dumb as it is ludicrous, and it’s about time it was retired.