UnNews:Santa Claus missing, officials fear worst
|
This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation. |
25 December 2007
SOMEWHERE OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN -- It is the sad duty of this news service to report that at approximately 3:45 GMT, both NORAD and NASA simultaneously lost contact with Christopher "Santa Claus" Kringle during his transoceanic flight. This man is perhaps best known for being the entity responsible for leaving gifts for every person in the world on the evening of December 24th each year. The missing status was confirmed when Kringle did not begin his usual U.S. East Coast stops at 5:00 GMT. After finishing his European route, Santa takes a much earned four-hour break during his crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. Sadly, it seems as if he has been lost at sea during that period. His usual routine involves delivering gifts to households in each time zone at local midnight; however, at press time, he was over ninety minutes late in arriving at the easternmost point in the United States.
Usually, the location of Father Christmas is strictly monitored by several agencies, for security reasons (a sleigh carrying billions of gifts traveling at speeds necessary to deliver the entirety of said gifts in one night could cause quite a bit of damage, if something were to go awry). With the advent of radar, sonar, missile defense systems, and GPS, personnel can track Santa anywhere on the globe to within a few yards. Several times in the past few years, jolly old St. Nick has used such systems to help him navigate, a necessity during foggy nights after the death of Rudolph in 1981. However, the weather this year was calm and clear all the way across the Atlantic, causing officials to speculate on things such as Santa error or engine/reindeer failure. Said one NASA fun-gineer: "We've lost contact with Santa for a few minutes several times since we began tracking him during World War II, but those were all due to extreme weather conditions or someone leaving out too many damn cookies (he eats them all, you know)."
Many experts on the subject say that this announcement, while shocking, does not come as a shock to them. "We were hoping that something like this wouldn't happen, but it really isn't a surprise considering recent trends at the North Pole" said one noted Kringle enthusiast. It seems that in the last decade, Santa Claus has been making modifications to his sleigh, the X-mas-wing, at an alarming rate. "At first it was just things like seat warmers and cupholders," said one North Pole insider, "but lately he's been messing with the propulsion and lift systems. He's obsessed with delivery efficiency." Ever since the now-famed incident in 1994 during which an aggressive Rottweiler cornered him and nearly caused Christmas to not come to the U.S. West Coast in time, Santa has become overly worried about a similar mishap causing a delay in his gift delivery schedule. As such, he has added large foils to the sides of his sleigh, and spent countless hours running his aircraft through aerodynamic evaluations. The design change that most concerns experts is the switch in the main power source of his sleigh from reindeer to nuclear power. Safety testing had not been completed by liftoff last night, but Claus insisted on keeping the propulsion system in place strictly as a backup to the reindeer, should the need arise to increase speed by over three thousand percent. This has officials worried that some sort of holiday meltdown has brought about the end of Santa Claus.
At this point, the worst is being assumed. Plans on throwing together a makeshift Christmas for areas of the world that Santa had not yet reached when he went missing are now underway. Many communities have organized candlelight vigils, while others (mainly Jewish communities) seem to have been lighting candles constantly for several days. Some are even looking ahead a full year, to the next delivery of billions of gifts in a single night. The Tooth Fairy's name has been mentioned, but current speculation suggests that the frontrunner for the job is the Easter Bunny, who undertakes a similar task each year (that of hiding billions of eggs in homes one night each year). Officials point out that the bunny has the experience (visiting an impossible number of houses in one night, being adored by children, gaining access to homes without tripping alarms or security systems) to become the next Santa Claus. Only time will tell what the fate of Christmases future will be. Please stay with UnNews for continuing coverage of this story.
