Santa Claus – highly topical once a year and main character in many Christmas movies. But do Santa’s good deeds trump the criminal classifications he may be guilty of? According to Leif GW Persson, however, it is important to first find out WHICH elf we are talking about.
– I want to emphasize that we are talking about the commercial plot – not the real one. This honorable little gray-clad Santa. He who looks after the yard and those who live there and makes sure there are no burning candles unextinguished before bed and such.
“Has 25 children with Camilla Läckberg”
According to GW, even the commercial plot has a function to fulfill, and that is to make children happy – something that is close to his heart. He himself has several children, grandchildren and – he reveals in Nyhetsmorgon – also children outside Sweden’s borders.
– I have 25 children together with Camilla Läckberg, maybe it’s not that well known. Down in Ukraine. They live in a Christian orphanage that Camilla and I contribute to, so they get a decent Christmas, which they wouldn’t have had otherwise. And it is not due to the war, but to the social misery that has unfortunately been a fact in Ukraine throughout Ukraine’s existence. So that’s nice of course, if you can give them some Christmas peace. And they surely believe in Santa, so it must be me then. Then Camilla gets to be Santa.
“Could be about illegal trespassing”
Several classic Christmas carols describe how Santa goes from house to house and down the chimney to give pats to the children. Something that is not completely straightforward from a legal perspective, explains GW.
– It can be about illegal trespassing, if you have not announced your arrival early. And then he parks the reindeer on the slope. It’s not that serious, but he then covers several parking spaces, which is in the nature of things because it’s quite a long crew. But it is not a crime, but a misdemeanor. So then you don’t end up in charge registers like this, he says.
Even though it should cost Santa a few thousand in fines, he gets away cheaply.
– It should do so, but there are very few notifications for that type of wrong parking, explains GW.
“Don’t understand how men manage”
Santa has also reasonably flown to get where he is going – not only at very low altitude, but also in a densely built-up area, which could mean a violation of airspace.
– It could be, oh yes, you can’t travel anyway in the air, you can’t. It is difficult to fly in urban areas, even if it is done with the help of reindeer and sled. But it will be difficult to get the other things together logistically. I don’t understand how the man keeps up – there must be hundreds of millions of visits in the Western world alone, during a relatively limited period of time. So something strange has happened along the way. It may be that there are several elves in operation.
Santa also gets a few hundred million wish lists. Could it be a computer problem that he is accumulating so many?
– It can also be privacy-infringing data registers that are established in connection with it, says GW.