In Latin America, we believe in Baby Jesus as the gift-giver. But one day, someone suggested to Santa that he should cover the Southern Hemisphere.
“Hey, Saint Nick, wanna work with us? Come on down. Down here we work on commission. For every gift you drop off, we’ll give you 20 bucks. And for every 10 deliveries, we’ll even throw in tamales for your people”.
Scratching his beard, Santa agreed, shy and suspicious, because he’d already heard about some strange stuff. The Tooth Fairy once told him that her southern equivalent, Ratón Pérez, was literally a mouse.
Nonetheless, Santa set sail from the North Pole. He had to fly Latin American Airlines, and everything started going downhill when they charged him new government fees to transport the sleigh. In the cargo hold he barely fit his magic bag, which was sniffed by three different German shepherds upon arrival. At Bogotá’s El Dorado Airport, he became famous on the TV show “Airport Alert” because Rudolph’s nose was bright red and covered in white snow… and that seemed extremely suspicious.
In Lima, he had to wait because his luggage was rerouted to the Cayman Islands, where, coincidentally, he keeps his personal “donation” accounts. Then in La Paz, authorities jailed one of his elves for allegedly panhandling outside parliament. In Caracas he got caught in the hailstorm of the century; at least it reminded him of snow, but it dented his sleigh. So he paid a neighborhood mechanic to retrofit the vehicle so he could land it on the floodwaters of the Paraná in Brazil.
In Cartagena de Indias, people assumed he was just another overheated gringo, shirt soaked in sweat, trench coat tied around his waist. They gave him one of those “exotic” beach massages that cost $100 for three minutes.
When he checked the kids’ wish lists, everything was in Spanish. He had to find a priest to translate because ChatGPT couldn’t handle “trompo,” “golosa,” “matatena,” “palo encebado,” “guayos,” cometas,” etc.
He had to order extra gifts online (from the platform Timo) because the number of soccer balls requested was beyond comprehension, especially in Argentina, where it wasn’t even winter anymore, it was summer! Delivery took forever because everything arrived in a rusty container from China. Not every kid had behaved well, so he had to gather extra coal from the mines in Magallanes, Chile.
And he didn’t realize that most houses didn’t have chimneys, garages or backyards for sleigh-landing purposes. He had to ring some doorbells and sneak through windows at others. People even confused him with a sketchy burglar who wore a Christmas hat with long hair and a beard. He faced a couple of arrests and had to pay bribes for bail.
On top of that, Interpol is now looking for him for breach of contract. He showed up late, because in the Southern Hemisphere gifts are handed out at midnight on the 24th, not Christmas morning, and he left many kids crying. That’s not even counting the delays from traffic jams in Bogotá, São Paulo, and Mexico City. It got so bad the Three Wise Men nearly beat him there from the Sahara.
Overheated, malaria-infected, with reindeer that now looked like stray dogs, he headed back to the North Pole. He had a layover in the U.S., but forgot to get his visa. So he came in through Sonora, reached Arizona, and stayed at a shelter for a couple of days while he fattened back up on tortillas and frijoles (beans) and recovered his ruminant buddies from Animal Protection Services. He was never the same again. So much so that Mrs. Claus barely recognized him; she almost mistook him for Bigfoot or Donald Trump.
He told his beloved: “I’m never going back to the Southern Hemisphere. Down there everything works backwards. I’ll leave that to Baby Jesus, he’s the only one who can infiltrate the underworld.”
Colorín colorado… Este cuento se ha acabado. (The end.)