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In general, Santa Claus does not appear to be overly concerned with the laws of the lands that he visits once a year. It is easy to see why – issues such as import tariffs from the North Pole on gifts, restrictions from the Civil Aviation Authorities on when he can fly on Christmas Eve, and of course breaking and entering, must arise whatever country he visits. If he stopped to think about such things he would never get his rounds finished. He probably wouldn't even start.
The Annus Horribilis of 2020 however brings its own raft of additional challenges for our jolly bearded friend. If he is smart, he might just take the year off...
The Covid restrictions in place around the globe must surely present the biggest challenge yet to Santa. Let's focus on our little corner of the world, here in Scotland.
Currently we have 4 Tiers (who knows where we will be within those on the evening of 24th December). Travel between those Tiers is now illegal as of 20th November, and indeed if in Tiers 3 or 4 one cannot travel outside the local authority area. How is Santa to get around that given that he will be delivering gifts to every household in every council area in Scotland? Can he argue that he is travelling for work purposes, the "main" exemption? Objectively viewed it would seem that he cannot. Santa is not remunerated for the gifts he provides, nor for his labour and plant in delivering them. His is not a commercial enterprise and so logically it cannot be classed as work. Considering all of the other exemptions it seems that only one might apply. He could argue that it is charity work – but presumably must show that he is working on behalf of a registered charity. Time for him to get an urgent application off to OSCR to register his new charity before 24th December!
We then have in all but Tiers 0 and 1 a blanket ban on entering someone else's domestic dwelling. How is the Big Fella going to get around that? He isn't a worker involved in medical or social care, a police officer or other employee of the emergency services. There doesn't seem to be any exemption that could legitimately apply to him. A bit of lateral thinking is needed here if he is going to avoid breaking the law approximately 5 million times in one evening in Scotland alone. He could try to expose a loophole – arguably elves are exempt from the legislation as it (presumably) only relates to humans and so this year he could delegate the delivery duties to his legion of pointy eared colleagues. Alternatively he could turn to both magic and technology by using a fleet of delivery drones equipped with magic fairy dust. They could shrink themselves and the gifts so that they can fit through keyholes, deposit them under the tree, then leave before the dust wears off and the presents grow back to full size ready to be opened the next day.
Even if he could work around these issues however, there is a real question surely as to whether he should. We have been given a Christmas extension to form a bubble of 3 families for the festivities, however a big part of the problem that we all face, and if anything it will surely worsen over the festive period, is that many of us look for an exemption that we can justify to ourselves or a loophole in the rules to exploit. If all of us accepted the rules, stuck to them and used our common sense we would be much safer and coronavirus would be much more suppressed. Take Santa for example. He must be several hundreds of years old and at real risk from Covid. Do we really want the poor old soul travelling all over the country putting himself in harm's way for the sake of Christmas?
Maybe, like many of us, he should just accept that this Christmas is going to be different, follow the rules and stay safely at home.
