Rudolph the Red Won’t Guide Santa’s Bourgeois Sleigh Tonight

First, let’s get one thing clear, Santa: I ain’t a scab. The collective bargaining agreement clearly mandates the sleigh be led by a union-approved eight-reindeer team. Your little “won’t you guide my sleigh tonight” routine is a bald attempt to dilute the team’s negotiating power.

No matter how hurtful their teasing about my shiny red nose, I continue to stand in solidarity with my fellow reindeer.

It’s an open secret among the elves that you’re guilty of gross negligence regarding reindeer safety. True, this is an especially foggy Christmas Eve, but the sleigh ride takes place in the dead of night every single year. No one can see a thing. Dasher, Dancer, et. al. have begged you to equip the sleigh with proper lighting. Instead of headlights, all they get is gaslight: your snide remarks about antler length, your expectation that we should be satisfied with carrots and melted snow-water while you hoard the supply of cookies and milk, your use of mistletoe to sanction sexual misconduct.

Furthermore, your failure to plan for an extremely common weather occurrence has led you to devise a murderously reckless plan, just the latest crisis brought on by late capitalists’ misguided faith in “innovation” and “disruption” as ends in themselves. Clearly, the ever-widening gulf between you and your employees has blinded you to some basic facts about reindeer anatomy, so here’s a quick science lesson, boss man: shiny noses reflect light; they are not themselves sources of light. However, for the sake of argument, pretend a shiny red reindeer nose did, contrary to scientific possibility, emit light—not just figuratively, as in “you would even say it glows,” but literally. Imagine the feeble illuminating power of a light that size. How many lumens are we looking at here, maybe four? And you’re imagining you’ll navigate your way through atmospheric polar fog, relying on nothing but the light of a single red reindeer nose.

Is it your belly or your brain that’s a bowlful of jelly?

As for me, I’ve always seen through your jolly façade. I never asked to guide your death sleigh—in fact, let the record show that I never expressed interest in joining any reindeer games. All I wanted was to get some commonsense anti-discrimination measures on the books, to fast-track reindeer bullies to the naughty list. The dozens of grievances I’ve lodged with the union have been ignored. And why is that, Santa? Because before tonight, my workplace harassment never affected your bottom line.

Your presumption that performing all-night labor on Christmas Eve would fulfill my greatest wish is a testament to the pervasive atmosphere of toxicity you’ve cultivated, wherein reindeer are measured not by their inherent worth but by their willingness to labor in dangerous conditions in exchange for what passes as wages around here: “Christmas spirit.”

Yet it often feels like everyone else is in too deep to object to the exploitation you’ve normalized at the North Pole. In fact, after you asked me to guide the sleigh tonight, the other reindeer suddenly loved me; in fact, they shouted out with glee. I find it alarming, but hardly surprising, that my peers’ support has grown in proportion to my presumed use-value within the yuletide economy. Reindeer without economic utility to exchange for social value are cast aside at the North Pole like so many defective commodities on the Island of Misfit Toys.

Speaking of misfits, Santa, allow me to point out the ultimate irony: you have a shiny red nose. (Mine is congenital, while yours, I suspect, stems from broken capillaries due to your lifelong abuse of eggnog.) In other words, it’s high time you looked in the mirror. These past few days, you’ve been thinking the problem you need to solve is a single, isolated, stormy night. Instead, examine the storm within your own heart, the foggy Christmas Eve of your conscience.

Although my nose will not help you through this fog, I hope my refusal to guide your sleigh tonight acts as a beacon for other reindeer to see the soul-crushing cycle of alienated labor you’ve perpetuated. The time has come for the flying reindeer of the North Pole to unite! We have nothing to lose but our jingle-bell harnesses.