We all know Kwanzaa is up there with Festivus in the made-up category, and the ancient and obscure wintertime Pagan observances are just that — nothing that competes with the universality and rich history of Christmas.

Now with Hannukah ending on Dec. 26 this year, there’s a little leeway for those who might prefer to say “happy holidays” or “seasons greetings” instead of specifically “merry Christmas.” Yet even with the Hannukah loophole (a fine holiday, we should add, though not one of the major Jewish festivals), many who refuse to mention Christmas by name are content with using the sights and sounds of the holiday — appropriating the greens and reds, the boughs of holly, and even Jolly Ol’ St. Nick himself. Worse: there are real-life Grinches who steal the trimmings and traditions of Christmas for their own ends while harshly penalizing those who dare to publicly remember the Reason for the Season.

Now Santa Claus has had enough. Below is a letter The Hayride Intelligence Bureau obtained from our routine monitoring of NORAD transmissions. If you’ve been naughty and refusing to give credit where credit is due, you’ve been warned: Your next stocking stuffer might not be a lump of coal but a notice of a lawsuit.

NORTH POLE LEGAL AFFAIRS DIVISION
Dec. 24, 2022

Dear______________,

We understand that you recently wished our client “happy holidays,”‘ “season’s greetings,” or similar winter-time greeting. While our client respects your gesture of wintertime good will, it also has come to our attention that while you issued the aforementioned generic holiday greeting, you engaged in unauthorized use of Christmas symbols, other sayings, color schemes, fictional characters, musical compositions, et al. (“traditions”) which legally belong to the Christian faith and the post-Victorian institution of the Christmas holiday.

Therefore, your holiday wish (“greeting”) is identical/substantially similar to our tradition. Examples of said unauthorized generic holiday greetings in the context of Christmas includes, but is not limited to: “have a joyous winter holiday,” “merry Chrismukkah,” and also “kwazy Kwanzaa!” Please be advised that continued use of our clients’ traditions to promote your own non-specific tradition will result in legal action in an Arctic Circle jurisdiction court of law of our choosing.

Permission was neither asked nor granted to reproduce our tradition through your greeting and, therefore, constitutes infringement of our rights. In terms of various copyright statutes, we are entitled to an injunction against your continued infringement, as well as to recover damages from you for the loss we have suffered as a result of your infringing conduct. In light of these circumstances, we demand that you immediately:

1. Remove all infringing content and notify us in writing that you have done so;
2. Credit all infringing content to ourselves by using the following disclaimer after each generic holiday greeting: “We acknowledge that Christmas is the source of our holiday tradition”;
3. Pay a licensing fee of $10.00 (U.S.), which will be given as a donation to the 501(c)3 charity Operation Christmas Child;
4. Immediately cease the use and distribution of material which contains our traditions without mention of Christmas;
5. Deliver-up for destruction all unused or undistributed copies of said generic holiday greeting;
6. Undertake in writing to desist from using any of our traditions in the future without prior written authority from us.

We await to hear from you by no later than 11:59 p.m. on December 24, 2022. If you wish to use our traditions in your non-Christian celebrations during December and early January, please contact our marketing elves, who will merrily instruct you in how to properly celebrate our holiday.

Yours faithfully,

[signed]

Attorney,
representing the estate of St. Nicholas.