The consequences of a hard Brexit for an importer/exporter like Santa

If Britain crashes out of the EU with no deal this will have consequences for independent import/export operators like Santa Claus, who has hitherto, as a Lapland-based Finn, benefited from frictionless trade across the EU. Here are some of the things Santa has to look forward to next year in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Next year Santa Claus will need to queue up in Dover with all the other foreign schmucks for required customs checks. That’s fine with us, say the British, even though by then most of Santa’s presents will amount to emergency food drops.

The customs officials will be interested in whatever Rudolph’s problem is, but after several hours questioning him about his red nose and the fact he has commissioned a whole song about himself (clear signs of drug use), they’ll let him off with a caution. Unfortunately several of Santa’s elves will be repatriated to Rivendell because they cannot name the British prime minister or Warlord Supreme (this is a bit of a trick question as the British overlord will be changing on a weekly basis by then due to the war).

It’s not all bad. On the plus side without the meddling EU dictating what’s “healthy” or “ethical”, Santa will be able to pump his reindeer full of growth hormones so that they’re all muscle and swollen and emotional. “What are you ****ing looking at?” Santa’s reindeers will say as they fly over your town.

Patrick Freyne: Home alone? Here’s a few scary movies for Christmas

---

Patrick Freyne: From Kylie to Declan Nerney, a history of taoiseach rock

---

Go back to Dublin with yourself Dermot Bannon. We’re grand here in the dark

---

Patrick Freyne: Be afraid, be very afraid of these Christmas ads

---

The British will be thrilled. Anyone who has been to a British high street after ten in the evening will know this to be their national greeting. Indeed, in the spirit of making Britain great again "what are you ****ing looking at?" is how the queen will open her 2019 Christmas speech, now two hours of drunken weeping, followed by a broadcast of the classic family film Threads. Then broadcasting will cease because of energy rationing.

Santa will need to regulate his identity for all this, of course. At the moment he operates under many aliases – Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Santy, St Nicholas, Jingle Jangle John, The Red Creeper, Toots Cunningham, Krampus and Globulus Snakeworthy MD. After Brexit he will be required to adopt a normal English name like “Boris” or “Jason” or “Kev”.

I assure you, the children will be just as excited to see “Boris” or “Jason” or “Kev” breaking into their home at four in the morning. “Kev” will be draped, not in socialist red, but in the Union Jack, and he will be encouraged to drink an English drink like Stella not a weird foreign drink like eggnog (I’m pretty sure that after Brexit all hens will be dead somehow and eggs will be deemed “fictional” or “unpatriotic”).

Child labour laws

Santa will also be encouraged to use the door like an Englishman. This is because after the Tories relax the child labour laws, the chimneys will be crammed with wheezing urchin chimneysweeps and little matchgirls (they'll store the matchgirls up the chimney too for some reason). These sooty tykes will be netted by future Minister for Children Jacob Rees Mogg, who will patrol the country in a Victorian jalopy in search of cheap workers to replace Johnny Foreigner. When bleeding hearts asks about future childcare policies, he'll show them the film Oliver and possibly some issues of the Beano from the 1950s, in which he stars, and in which brutalised children have jobs and are thrilled by being gifted a sausage or a pie.

Anyway, after Santa is extricated by emergency services from his first infant-clogged smokestack, he’ll get the message. “I’ll use the door in future,” he’ll say, a little shakily.

There will be still more changes. Santa will no longer be permitted to put presents under a Christmas tree, as this tradition was brought into the country by a German blow-in (Victoria’s bae Prince Albert), and thus all the Christmas trees are probably being bugged by the European Court of Justice. Instead the British will double down on the solidly English, coercively sexual plant parasite, mistletoe. Mistletoe was thought by the ancient Britons to be the semen of the thunder god Taranis (seriously), and the plant is used to this day to encourage people to kiss other people they don’t want to kiss. This brings two thoughts to mind: “ugh” and “Taranis should really see a doctor”.

Sadly, due to post-Brexit recruitment problems at the NHS, Taranis will not be able to see a doctor. The death of Taranis will be the Brexiteers' "Diana moment" and people will collectively mourn the beloved deity. They will line the streets… or "tracks" or "trenches" or whatever constitutes "streets" after the EU structural funding is gone.

So Santa will gaze suspiciously at the huge pile of mistletoe in the middle of the first British sitting room he visits, and he will place the presents, rewrapped badly after the customs search, cautiously at its edge. Arms will emerge from beneath the pile of sodden plant mass to pull the presents within. Santa will be deeply creeped out. “This is your culture now?” he’ll cry.

“This is our culture now!” the Brexiteers will declare triumphantly, stripping to the waist for the yuletide mistletoe dance that they currently perform in secret, but which will in future happen on live television near the huge wicker man they’re building on the site of the Shard.

Gales of laughter

It will be difficult for Santa to concentrate as he glides towards the west of Britain. This is partly because he’s still thinking of the mistletoe horror and the chimney horror and the Brexiteer dance horror and because his buff hormone-addled reindeers are screaming with rage, but also because of the gales of laughter coming from across the sea.

That’s the Irish, a race who have suffered for centuries because of the Brits being “at it again” but who are quite enjoying watching their former colonisers punch themselves repeatedly in the groin. They’ll put up with a certain amount of trade disruption to watch the British do this.

The Irish wave at Santa and Santa waves back. He doesn't recognise any of them because they're all in balaclavas smuggling diesel across the Border, even John Bruton. Santa has already been to Ireland. He hopped over there on December 25th. Because of customs delays, however, the British have moved Christmas Day to mid-March. Santa doesn't like working in March. He thinks he mightn't go to Britain next year. Sure, he mightn't even get in.