Santa: Valid or Nah?

Image+courtesy+of+The+Conversation

Image courtesy of The Conversation

Matthew DeAngelis, Staff Writer

While writing the invites to my family’s annual Christmas morning cookout, a single name piqued my curiosity. We used to send this man invites, but for 47 years straight he turned us down due to “work commitments” thus he stopped being invited because we already knew the answer. As my eyes stared down on the piece of paper with the names and addresses of all those invited, the name Santa F. Claus was staring right back at me. I saw on LinkedIn that this year his entire company had gone virtual so I figured I would once again see if Mr. Claus wished to attend the cookout. Once I began writing in the invitation a new thought entered my head: is Santa valid or Nah? 

I did the thing any reasonable man would do and drafted a pros and cons list to decide if he was even worthy of attending such a prestigious event. There are a few reasons why I feel Santa may not be valid or as the younglings say “buggin”.  The first is his attire. The invite clearly says business casual (as all cookouts are) yet I know this man owns no other clothes except for a giant red suit. I do not want a man gallivanting around my yard slurping down an ice tea while licking his fingers off my succulent barbeque sauce while looking right out of the movie Elf

Another major downside to Santa Claus pulling up to this super-lit function is he always travels with a pack of reindeer. Now do not get me wrong I am allowing plus-ones, but plus-nines is a bit extreme (this ain’t a Mormon party). The last time I saw him with his reindeer one of them tried to con my elderly grandmother into joining a pyramid scheme so I still may hold a bit of a grudge. My final issue with inviting him is that Santa always insists on making the most grand of arrivals to events and has destroyed the fireplaces of at least 12 of my friends. 

Now onto the things that make Santa valid. Santa always brings presents with him wherever he goes and this year I was too cheap to get party favors so it would be nice for him to dole out some gifts (except to those on the naughty list such as myself). Mr. Claus is also on a diet of exclusively cookies and milk which he provides himself from a secret stash he claims to have. This would be quite nice as it would be one less person I would need to be concerned about feeding. The final reason why Santa may be valid is that his aux is just next level heat. Word on the street is that he is the only artist performing at Fyre Festival and they still sold every ticket. One time I watched as Santa freestyled the entirety of what would later be called “The College Dropout” after Kanye West stole the songs straight from Santa’s lips.  Are these pros enough to outweigh the cons?  I sadly can not say that is the case.  Call Santa Claus at my house Trae Young at MSG because I, Matthew DeAngelis, have officially deemed Santa F. Claus to be buggin.