The Princess was going through the wastepaper basket for her own obscure reasons this morning.
Her: Why did you throw this out?
Me: Because it’s last year’s telephone directory.
Her: But I want it.
Pause.
Her: Look at this receipt. It’s for books; including the Percy Jackson book I got from Santa. Does this mean that Mummy and Daddy are really Santa?
Anguished pause.
Me: No, it means that we bought that book as a present for you but when we saw that Santa had bought it we gave it away to someone else.
It’s like living with bloody Sherlock Holmes.
Oh God that’s awful! I somehow think you aren’t going to make it through to next Christmas with the Princess’s Santa innocence intact. And why did she want the phone book – to memorise it?
I think my parents explained that Santa was really busy so he outsourced most of the present buying. see also: tooth fairy
Some lawyer you are! Throwing out evidence without thoroughly shredding it. Tsk tsk.
Santa delegates. He has to. There are so many children in the world now that even with their elfin magic, the elves can’t make enough presents for all of them. Rather than have some children not get a Christmas, we parents got together and asked Santa if we could help out by getting our own children’s presents ourselves, so the presents the elves make can go to the children who wouldn’t get a Christmas if Santa didn’t bring it to them. We got Santa’s approval to buy your presents in the shops, and the shops buy them from the factories. More people buying presents means the factories need more people to make the toys, and the shops need more people to sell them, and that makes more jobs, and more people can find work and afford to buy nice things for their children, and the really old elves who have worked so hard for centuries and centuries making toys for the children can finally retire to the Bahamas and enjoy their old age. As for the Santa approval, that’s what desktop publishing programs are for.
My mum went with the outsourcing explanation. Though, thinking about it, outsourcing wasn’t a word back then…
Think I will be going with the outsourcing argument strongly argued for here, though, shredding, of course, also an option. Nevertheless, fear that C is correct about next year.