It turned out to be an out-of-work-actor friend of mine who'd been stuffed into a Santa suit and wedged onto a golden throne next to the escalators. Back in the day, you couldn't move for out-of-work actors, stuffed into Santa suits and wedged onto golden thrones in stuffy shops.
I've been round town a few times now this year. There are no Father Christmases, not even the charity ones who ring handbells outside the Pound Shop. There are no grottoes either, at least not that I've found. Usually the parents are lining up outside flashing plastic castles and polystyrene snowscapes! Where are they all? What's happened?
Now it could be that all the Santas are off on a jolly. And it would be a jolly! Hundreds of Father Christmases dancing in the snow, flinging mince pies, while a potion of milk and sherry trickles down their enormous beards.
"You'd better watch out!" they cry, uproariously. And laugh they do, for this year, Santa Claus is going nowhere; a few metres away, their sleighs are drunkenly skewed into the snow and a herd of reindeer are munching on wrapping paper.
Or... it could be that Christmas is changing, kids are growing up faster and parents (who were kids themselves not so long ago) much prefer queuing up at the German Christmas Market.
Poor old Santa then, kicked out of Christmas while it becomes ever more commercialised. Poor Father Christmas, slowly being forgotten and erased from the holiday that bears his name! Isn't he what Christmas is all about? How can we still call it 'Christmas' without him? Will the story of Kris Kringle be just a whispered rumour that all the grown-ups are too ashamed to remember, or talk about?
Well, Santa, maybe you know how it feels now when there's no room at the inn.
Maybe, instead of getting drunk at the North Pole, you can join the rest of us at the only place that Christmas makes any sense: a tiny stable on a starlit night. You'd be really welcome, I just know it.
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