'Twas a Month Before Inauguration

'Twas a month before inauguration in the great white North,

Where Santa could be found pacing back and forth.

You see, the old guy had just received an odd, angry note,

From a strange orange man raging about some "unfair" vote.

Letters should be from children, Santa distractedly mused,

Not grown ass men, bitter about who the voters had choosed.

Besides, Kris Kringle wondered, peering through his bifocal glasses,

These words are unreadable, did this bozo fail all his classes?

Still, St. Nick sat down figuring, Oh, what the heck,

I've got a few minutes to read some of this dreck.

After all, he chuckled, taking a long sip of his cocoa,

A letter from an adult is nice, though this one seems loco.

"I won by a lot!" it began. "The election wasn't even close!"

And other false claims, all crazy and bellicose.

"If those ballot counters had the right priorities,

They would have tossed out the votes of those ethnic minorities!"

Old Claus choked on his drink but soldiered on with the letter,

From this man-child who claimed to have made so many lives better.

Wait, Santa paused, hasn't he lied and grifted while so many suffer,

 And on the golf course (and life) he's known as a duffer?

Kringle went to his laptop and skimmed the brutality,

The man's cruelty, his coarseness, his racist morality.

This guy doesn't give a damn for anyone but him,

Santa inferred, reading the names of those fired on a whim.

There was Mike Flynn, Sean Spicer, Tom Price and Steve Bannon.

All fantastically corrupt, fodder for his cannon.

Then Tillerson and Sessions, General Kelly and Mark Esper,

So many, many more, each gone with a meek "Yes, sir."

Santa grew weary from all of the chaos he read,

The naked indifference while so many citizens bled.

All year long they had been only desirous,

Of a federal government that could manage a virus.

That had shattered a once-proud country, now laid low,

An unraveling for decades, a case of reap what you sow.

The culmination was this fool and his outright defiance,

Of logic and reasoning, of experts and science. 

Tell a lie enough times people will believe it, Santa knew.

Get 'em all worked up over fiction, next thing...there's a coup.

But the old elf felt sorry for the masses, it wasn't really their fault,

A steady diet of propaganda has always created a cult. 

What's his appeal? Claus wondered. It can't be his looks.

Or that family of vipers, an amoral bunch of crooks.

Heaven forbid its his tantrums and the way that he rages,

and seems to take pleasure in those kids in them cages.

Santa returned to his chair and slumped heavily down,

Sad for those people who had endured such a clown.

He had sown fear and suspicion, desperation and malice,

Aided by politicians who were craven and callous.

No Christmas gift, Kris knew, will heal that nation's heart.

They've got work to do before they can even begin to start,

To build a country of One, for Many, for All.

Otherwise, he feared, they are in for a very hard fall.

Suddenly inspired, Father Christmas stood with a jerk.

Enough obsessing, it's time to get to work!

I've got just the gift for the world's worst troll. 

ELVES! he bellowed. WE'RE GONNA NEED MORE COAL!