What's Up With Santa Claus?

Santa Claus. What an icon. A global symbol of jolliness and good deeds. The mere thought of this tradition connotes a cup full of Christmas cheer and acts as an inspiration for children to behave appropriately. Speaking of which, Santa Claus is kind of a doody-head. I mean, the guy already has like 3/1000 of a second to park his sleigh (which has to be going like 5000 miles per hour), hop his lard ass down the chimney (or break into those houses that don't have chimneys through the back door), eat some unneeded cookies, drop some random presents off, hop back on the roof and peace out to the next house. That's cool. I can dig the thought of that.

What really begins to boggle my brain is Santa's overt attempt to exploit perceived bad children. He could very easily ignore those children, and increase the amount of time he could spend at each house; as we all know there are a great number of devilish children running a muck in our society. But no. He doesn't. He deliberately takes the time to stop at those children's homes - the ones he has never met and has no idea if they truly are bad people, or if maybe they just made a bad decision - and deliver COAL in their stockings! That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. What an a-hole. I bet when Santa was young, his mommy never gave him hugs. Who else has that much pent-up frustration that they make the conscious effort, when their time is already beyond strict, to go out of their way to deliver the most degrading present one could imagine? And what would be the psychological reverberations of such deeds? Let's create an example:

Let's say Jimmy Little was a pretty good child. He listened to his mom most of the time and helped her out around the house. Maybe one day he lied to her about breaking her vase on the front porch. But he feels great regret for his actions and his subsequent lying to his mother. [Enter: Santa's 'Bad List']. Little Jimmy Little is thus placed on the bad list even though he felt sorry and apologized for his wrongdoings. That year he receives coal in his stocking. Do you think that he will ever get better? No. Every year following that, he will see no point in owning up to his mistakes. He will consciously wrong others while eventually convincing himself there will be no benefit in doing the supposed 'right' thing, for he tried that as a child and was spat upon by the glory of Christmas' icon.

What did we grow up believing?