An Abomination in the Arctic

Santa's Workshop sends a sickening, sadistic message about our most sacred ecosytems.

Santa’s Workshop is a cultural symbol rivaled perhaps only by Cinderella’s Castle and Hogwarts insofar as the deep longing and capitalistic awe its image invariably induces in the innocent child’s soul. Its depiction within our captured media is always magical: a humming, colorful village garnished with intricate white snowflakes tumbling peacefully from the clouds—not a company town but a cultural capital, one in which good will, civility, and industry flow freely alongside the Christmas spirit. Sadly, this standard, heartwarming depiction belies a bleaker reality transpiring atop the sea ice, one that finds our whole planet under siege.

Remote, below zero, depressingly dark for half the year—the North Pole as the headquarters for a global toy enterprise was always stupid as shit. Santa could have picked central, logistical hubs like New York City or London, or Canada or Scandinavia if the wintry aesthetic really mattered to his brand—yet he instead selected an extreme end of the Earth, a place inhospitable and unreachable, anathema to human and elven flourishing alike.

The North Pole was chosen not because the white ice so nicely complements Santa’s carefully curated corporate red, nor because its inspiring isolation enables him to work peacefully and productively, but because of twisted economic incentive and the undeniable signal that setting up shop in one of the world’s most fragile ecosystem sends. And that message is: fuck you. Santa’s Workshop is no little mom-and-pop shop but a full-fledged factory, and the belief that its operation in an already abused Arctic climate could be anything but destructive is simple fantasy.

Santa is the apotheosis of the oligarch, his polar kingdom the climax of a Koch-induced wet dream. He sits atop vast oil reserves, close by and friendly to Russia, and, most importantly, far from the reach of any overzealous government agency or tax authority. No smug OSHA official is knocking on his door asking to speak to the overworked elf who ended his 36-hour shift with candy cane shards in his back. No SEC agent is flying in, wielding a badge and grilling the Big Man about his cryptocurrency, Nicecoin, that he’s been shilling to kids. Certainly no meddling EPA bureaucrat come to enforce their stupid clean little acts, questioning the polyester pumped into the sky, the gigatons of glitter dumped into the sea. And the IRS? Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho. Far away from our towns and cities he sits, unaccountable, untouchable, fattening his stomach, lining his pockets, pillaging his pole.

We know what it is that we allow him to do. We understand the unspeakable cost of this intoxicating industrial might we so shamelessly and fervently beseech, this insatiable hunger that defines the Christmas season and has defined our lives, the absolute logic of production at the expense of preservation that drives this desensitized age.

We crave so much the serenity of ripping into that seductive, suspected Stanley mug sparkling under the tree that we witness him plunder the tundra and we shrug. It is a consummation needed so deeply that we forgive an ecocide for it. He blackens the snowy owls with soot, he chokes the sun-soaked seals with microplastics, he melts the glistening sea ice and reduces our once proud polar bears to bones. The Colorado runs dry, the Amazon burns, and the glaciers vanish, but that’s simply the cost of a Chevy truck, two-day-shipping, and a holly jolly Christmas.