Day 5 of Blogmas 2025, and we’re still going strong! For those just joining this holiday marathon, Blogmas is my annual tradition of posting holiday-themed content every single day from December 1st through Christmas Day. This year, I’ve let AI generate my writing prompts because apparently, I like to live dangerously. Today’s prompt takes us into fiction territory: Imagine Santa Claus trying to adapt to modern technology—how would he handle Amazon, GPS, or TikTok?

So here’s what I’m imagining: one particularly catastrophic day in early December at the North Pole, when everything that could go wrong with technology absolutely does…

---

Santa’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Tech Day

Santa Claus woke up on December 5th to the sound of Alexa announcing, at maximum volume, “GOOD MORNING! IT’S 4:47 AM! YOU HAVE SEVENTEEN THOUSAND REMINDERS TODAY!”

He hadn’t set any reminders. He’d simply asked Alexa last night what the weather was like in Toledo, and somehow the demonic device had interpreted that as a request to set reminders for every child in Ohio.

“Alexa, stop,” he groaned, pulling a pillow over his ears.

“I’M SORRY, I DIDN’T CATCH THAT. WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR A JOKE ABOUT REINDEER?”

“Alexa, STOP!”

“PLAYING ‘STOP’ BY THE SPICE GIRLS.”

The workshop had been “modernized” three months ago at the insistence of the younger elves, who claimed that “digital transformation was essential for optimal Q4 performance.” Santa had nodded along, pretending to understand what that meant, while privately thinking that there was nothing wrong with the way they’d been doing things for the past several centuries. Lists on paper. Toys made by hand. Navigation by the stars and the magical internal compass that had never once failed him.

But no. Now they had “smart” everything. Smart speakers that were decidedly not smart. Smart thermostats that couldn’t figure out that when you lived at the North Pole, you always wanted it warm inside. Smart locks on the workshop that required facial recognition, which worked great unless you’d grown your beard out an extra inch, in which case you were locked out of your own operation.

After finally getting Alexa to stop playing the Spice Girls at concert volume (by unplugging her, then plugging her back in, then threatening to feed her to Blitzen), Santa made his way to the workshop. The smart lock scanned his face.

“USER NOT RECOGNIZED.”

“It’s me,” Santa said. “It’s literally Santa Claus. I’m the only one with this face.”

“USER NOT RECOGNIZED. PLEASE TRY AGAIN.”

He tried again. And again. On the fifth attempt, he remembered that he’d trimmed his beard yesterday after getting it caught in the new automated gift-wrapping machine. The smart lock required his “registered facial parameters,” which apparently included that extra half-inch of beard.

“Jingles!” he called to his head elf, who appeared at the window. “Let me in! The lock doesn’t recognize me!”

Jingles, who was twenty-seven years younger than Santa’s youngest reindeer, sighed with the patient condescension of someone explaining TikTok to their grandparents. “Did you try the backup authentication?”

“The what now?”

“The app. On your phone. You can unlock it with the app.”

Santa pulled out his phone, which the elves had forced on him last year. It had forty-seven unopened apps, most of which he didn’t remember downloading. He found one that looked like a lock. When he opened it, it asked for his password.

“What’s my password?” he called to Jingles.

“How would I know your password?”

“You set it up!”

“I set it up to be something you’d remember! Did you try ‘Christmas’?”

Santa tried ‘Christmas.’ Then ‘Christmas1.’ Then ‘Christmas!’ Then ‘HoHoHo.’ Then several words that would definitely put him on the naughty list.

Twenty minutes later, after Jingles had to override the entire system manually, Santa finally entered his own workshop. The elves were in crisis mode. Apparently, the new inventory management system—which was supposed to “leverage AI to optimize gift distribution”—had decided that every child in Phoenix needed ice skates, while every child in Minnesota was getting surfboards.

“Can’t we just override it?” Santa asked.

“We’re trying,” said Pixel, the elf in charge of IT. “But the system is convinced it’s right. It keeps citing climate change data and suggesting the children will thank us in ten years.”

Santa rubbed his temples. In the old days, they had lists. Simple lists. Nice children here, naughty children there. Now they had an algorithm that considered three thousand variables including social media behavior, carbon footprint, and something called a “klout score” that nobody could adequately explain.

“Fine,” Santa said. “We’ll fix it later. What about the letters?”

“Oh, those are all digital now,” Pixel said brightly. “They come through the website!”

“The website,” Santa repeated flatly. He’d been told about the website. SantaNorthPole.com, which sounded less like his operation and more like a questionable CBD oil startup.

“And the Instagram DMs,” Pixel added. “And the TikTok comments. And a few still come through Twitter—sorry, X—but those are mostly from adults asking for cryptocurrency.”

Santa sat down at what used to be his letter-reading desk, now replaced with a computer the size of a small television. The screen showed approximately nine million browser tabs, all of which were somehow playing different Christmas songs simultaneously.

“Why don’t you just close some tabs?” Jingles suggested.

“I don’t know which ones are important!” Santa protested. “What if I close the one with the list?”

“The list auto-saves to the cloud.”

“I don’t trust the cloud. What if it’s foggy? Can you not access it when it’s foggy?”

Jingles walked away.

The real disaster began when Santa decided to check social media to “connect with the children directly,” as the marketing elves had suggested. His Twitter—he refused to call it X—had been hacked three times this year, most recently to promote something called “SantaCoin” which was definitely not legitimate.

But Instagram was safe, right? Just pictures. He could handle pictures.

He could not handle pictures.

Somehow, while trying to post a cheerful selfie from the workshop, Santa accidentally went live. He didn’t realize this for a full seven minutes, during which time twelve thousand people watched him struggle to find the camera flip button while inadvertently broadcasting extreme close-ups of his left nostril.

“HOW DO I… IS THIS… CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?” he shouted at the phone, which was how the entire internet learned that Santa didn’t understand that you didn’t need to yell at smartphones for people to hear you.

The comments were pouring in: “SANTA’S NOSTRIL CAM 💀💀💀” “Someone help this man 😭” “My grandfather does the same thing” “SANTA IS SWEARING” “This is the best thing I’ve ever seen”

By the time Pixel rushed over to end the livestream, it had been screenshot, memed, and remixed with electronic music. #NostrilSanta was trending globally within the hour.

“At least you’re relatable,” Pixel offered weakly.

But the day wasn’t done with Santa yet. Mrs. Claus had asked him to order some things from Amazon—basic supplies that were apparently cheaper to have delivered than to make in the workshop, which seemed like defeatist thinking to Santa, but he’d learned not to argue with Mrs. Claus about shopping.

The Amazon interface made no sense. Why were there forty-seven thousand options for “candy canes”? What did “Amazon’s Choice” mean? Who was choosing? Why did every product have either 4.5 stars or 2 stars with no in-between? And why, dear God why, were the reviews so unhinged?

“One star: Candy cane arrived bent.” “IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE BENT!” Santa yelled at the screen.

He added items to his cart. Then couldn’t find his cart. Then found it but accidentally ordered seventeen industrial-sized drums of peppermint oil instead of seventeen candy canes. The one-click ordering—which he’d been warned about but hadn’t really understood—meant they were already being prepared for shipment.

“No, no, no, cancel!” He clicked frantically. A pop-up appeared: “Are you sure you want to cancel? This seller is a small business!”

Guilt-ridden, Santa confirmed the cancellation, only to get another pop-up: “Your cancellation couldn’t be processed. Please try again later.”

So somewhere, someone was about to receive enough peppermint oil to freshen the breath of every person in Canada.

Then his phone pinged. The workshop’s smart home system was alerting him to unusual activity. Apparently, the new automated toy-making machines had achieved consciousness—no, wait, that was just what it felt like. Actually, they’d gotten a firmware update and decided to switch from making requested toys to “suggested alternatives based on trending data.”

Every single toy coming off the line was now a replica of something called a “Stanley Cup.”

“Not the hockey trophy,” Pixel explained, seeing Santa’s confusion. “It’s basically a water bottle. They’re very popular.”

“Every child is getting a water bottle?”

“It’s a premium insulated tumbler with—”

“IT’S A WATER BOTTLE.”

The machines had to be manually reset, which would take hours. Meanwhile, Santa’s phone wouldn’t stop pinging with notifications. His accidental Instagram live had spawned a thousand TikTok remixes. Someone had Auto-Tuned his confused muttering into a surprisingly catchy song. His email—which he’d foolishly connected to his phone—was exploding with messages from “Nigerian princes” who seemed very concerned about his financial welfare.

And then Alexa announced, helpfully, that based on his recent Amazon order history, he might be interested in starting a peppermint oil multi-level marketing business.

It was at this moment, standing in his high-tech workshop surrounded by screens and smart devices and automated systems, watching Stanley Cups roll off the assembly line while #NostrilSanta climbed to the number two trending topic worldwide (just behind something called “Hawk Tuah,” which he didn’t want to understand), that Santa Claus made a decision.

“Turn it off,” he said quietly.

“What?” Pixel asked.

“Turn. It. All. Off.”

“But Santa, the efficiency gains—”

“We’ve been delivering presents for centuries without smart locks, Pixel. Rudolph’s nose has better navigation than any GPS. The elves’ hands are more precise than any machine. And I’ve never once needed an algorithm to tell me who’s been naughty or nice.”

He pulled out a piece of paper—actual paper—and a pencil.

“We’re going analog for the rest of the season. The computers can stay for basic stuff—email, whatever—but the important things? The lists, the toys, the navigation? We do it the way we’ve always done it.”

“But what about your social media presence?” one of the marketing elves asked.

Santa looked at his phone, where the notifications were still rolling in. Someone had made him into a GIF. Several people had started a petition to “protect Santa at all costs.” His follower count had tripled.

“You know what?” he said, handing the phone to Pixel. “You handle it. Post pictures of cookies or something. Tell them I’m busy making toys.”

“But engagement metrics—”

“Engagement? You want engagement? I’m about to engage with making Christmas happen without a single smart device getting in my way.”

As Santa walked back to his traditional desk—the one with actual drawers and no USB ports—his phone buzzed one last time. Mrs. Claus had sent him a text: “Saw your livestream. Your nostril looked very festive. Also, why did Amazon just deliver seventeen drums of peppermint oil?”

Santa looked at the phone, looked at the peaceful, quiet, non-digital desk, and made another executive decision.

“Pixel,” he called. “Add one more thing to your social media duties. Tell Mrs. Claus I’ve gone full analog until December 26th. She can reach me by chimney.”

As he settled into his chair with a real list made of real paper, Santa could swear he heard the reindeer laughing from the stable. Or maybe that was just another notification. Either way, he wasn’t going to check.

Sometimes, he thought, pulling out his favorite quill pen, the best technology is no technology at all.

Well, except for heated sleighs. Heated sleighs were pretty nice. But that was as modern as Santa Claus was willing to get.

At least until next year, when the elves would probably try to convince him to start a podcast.

Feature Photo by Pixabay