The Santa Clause is one of the most frequently-discussed movies in the
whole Christmas canon. That's partly because, when you look at it closely,
some of its details actually seem kinda bizarre, nonsensical, or even downright
disturbing. Here are some things kids might not notice about this modern holiday classic.
The central conceit of The Santa Clause is that, if something bad happens to Santa,
the next person who puts on his suit will inherit his title. Of course, the movie works well as
a comedy because the person who happens to do that, Scott Calvin, doesn't want to be Santa at
all — but is guilted into putting on the suit by his young son Charlie. Inevitably, the magic and
spirit of Christmas eventually wins Scott over, but not until after a considerable struggle.
That struggle is the heart of the film, but this all raises one unsettling question:
what if someone terrible had put on that suit? Scott can be kind of a jerk, but he's still
a pretty decent person. What if a hardened criminal had gotten their hands on the suit,
and put it on, say, as a disguise? What if they'd ignored or never even seen the
reindeer? What if someone who killed Santa intentionally, rather than accidentally,
fell subject to the clause? Honestly, it's a very poorly thought-out system.
Troubling contractual issues aside, Scott does put on the suit, and manages to bumble his way
through delivering a few gifts with Charlie before the reindeer take them back to the North Pole.
Once there, he is greeted by... well, by absolutely nothing. The reindeer simply run
away to their stables for the night, before an elf shows up and — without saying a word — puts
in a code to make the sleigh descend into Santa’s headquarters. The rest of the elves
then basically ignore their new boss as he hops out of the sleigh and starts asking questions.
When head elf Bernard finally does talk to Scott, he seems annoyed that he even
has to fill the new guy in, and the rest of the elves appear neither pleased nor concerned to
see the new Santa walking around like a deer in headlights. What's even more concerning is that
none of the elves seem to care at all that the old Santa just died and vanished into nothingness.
Did they really hate their old boss that much? Does this happen all the time,
so they just don't get attached? Everyone knows the North Pole is supposed to be cold, but jeez.
Speaking of the old Santa, the film never once stops to address his past life or legacy
at the North Pole. We don't know if he was a particularly good or bad Santa. We don't
know how long he was on the job. We don't know how well he got along with the elves.
This stuff is obviously brushed over so the film can get on with Scott's story,
but The Santa Clause 2 suggests that it's hugely important for Santa to get married,
and even eventually begin a family. Did the last Santa do those things? If so,
what happened to his Mrs. Claus? Is she long dead? Did she retire from the North Pole upon
his death? Or was he too new on the job to even contemplate that? These are all things
the story ignores in favor of a plot contrivance that allows an ordinary guy to become Santa,
after the old one is defeated by a slippery rooftop. But something still doesn't add up here.
The Santa Clause is a relatively short movie, and it's not until the sequels that you're
given a better look at the whole mythology of the North Pole and the people who populate it.
What the movies never explain, however, is just where the actual Santa clause comes from?
When Scott returns in the sleigh, Bernard and the other elves don't
seem all that surprised that they have to train a new Santa,
which suggests this isn't the first time a Father Christmas has died on the job. Nobody
explains how long the contract has been around, but it's fair to say that it's probably very,
very old — meaning the mantle of Santa Claus has been changing hands for some time.
So who actually wrote this contract? How did it become hidden in the fine print of that little
card? Who nailed down the technicalities? Does the North Pole have a legal department?
Clearly this thing exists because Santa needed to be replaced one time,
and the elves realized they had to create a legal precedent for getting
a new one — but the exact details as to how this came about are, sadly, never revealed.
Once Scott arrives at the North Pole — and finally gets a little explanation from Bernard — the head
elf seems to decide to calm him down rather than bombard him with too many details.
Which is fair enough, of course. So Bernard sends Scott to his room to get some rest.
"Judy will take you to your room. Get out of the suit, it needs to be cleaned."
"And taken in."
"Then get some sleep. We've got a lot of work to do and only a year in which to do it."
"Sleep on it and you'll learn more later" seems like a fair attitude to take with a
panicked new employee, but Scott actually wakes up in his own bed at home — with no memory of
how he got there and, more importantly, no further instructions from the North Pole.
So, like anyone would, he writes it all off as a weird dream. But then his body starts to change,
proving that his trip to the North Pole really happened. Even then, however,
there's still no word from the elves. The first real contact he receives from Bernard
is "the list," in the form of thousands of packages stacked throughout his house.
After that, things only get more manic. So much for easing the poor guy in.
Scott Calvin initially dismisses his role as the new Santa as nothing more than a
weird dream — but he soon finds that ignoring his new role has some physical consequences.
He starts to gain weight literally overnight, his facial hair begins to grow at a supernatural rate,
and he develops an insatiable appetite for dessert foods. When it all gets bad enough,
Scott does what most people would probably do in the same situation: He goes to his doctor.
After a thorough check-up, Scott's doctor delivers his patient a healthy dose of, uh… optimism.
"Okay, look. So what? You put on a little weight."
"A little weight? Does this look like a little weight to you?"
"Weight can fluctuate from year to year."
The doctor confirms that he can't find anything medically wrong with Scott,
so he basically just tells him to go home, eat less, and dye his hair. Now,
this is clearly a busy general practitioner who just wants to calm his patient, but you can't
help but wonder why he isn't digging deeper — and why Scott isn't asking him to. If Scott had just
offered to shave right there in the office, and the doctor watched the hair literally grow back,
he'd be sure to take notice. At the very least, he'd get a good research paper out of it.
The Santa Clause is a film that hinges on belief, and the central conflict involves
Charlie's steadfast belief that not only is Santa Claus real, but that his father has now become
St. Nick himself. This creates tragic issues within Charlie's family, as his mother, Laura,
and stepfather, Neil, become convinced that Scott is making himself appear to be Santa in order to
take Charlie away from them. It also plays the classic Christmas story trope of adults not
believing in Santa Claus like children do. Laura and Neil even discuss this while they recall the
exact moments they stopped believing in Santa, because they didn't get the gifts they asked for.
"I was three, and it was an Oscar Mayer wienie whistle."
Here's the problem, though: the audience knows that Santa is real,
and that means these families all wake up on Christmas morning to presents that weren't
there when everyone went to bed. But how do the parents feel about this? Is there some
strange magic spell that convinces them they put them there? Do they simply forget which presents
they bought and which ones they didn't? Are they just confused? It doesn't matter that
much to the plot, but it would have been nice to get even a throwaway explanation for this,
since the film spends so much time dealing with the parents' beliefs.
Okay, so in case you've never seen this movie, it's probably worth knowing that some of the
elves have jetpacks. These elves are known as the Effective Liberating Flight Squad, or E.L.F.S.,
and they're first called into service when Santa is arrested at Laura and Neil's house.
Now, setting aside the idea that a man who can fit down any chimney
somehow can't do anything about prison bars, the movie's "elves with attitude"
shtick raises a whole new problem for Santa and his North Pole crew.
This is because the elves stage a very flashy and not-at-all covert extraction of their boss from
jail. They tell the cop on duty that they're his "worst nightmare," wrap him up in ribbon,
and shove a donut in his mouth. They then cut the door off Santa's
cell with some kind of high tensile "tinsel" and simply steal him away.
Now, you've got to hand it to the elves for having the forethought to launch their raid on the one
night where the station is manned by just one cop. But that doesn't clear up the other problems:
namely, that there's now going to be a police report, and even probably some surveillance
footage, depicting a group of apparent children magically ribboning up a cop and abducting a guy
dressed like Santa. That's going to make for some very weird team meetings once Christmas is over.
Obviously, despite all the weirdness, The Santa Clause has a happy ending.
Scott finally accepts his job as the avatar of Christmas joy and flies off to the North Pole,
having converted Neil and Laura to his cause and forged a loving, lasting relationship with his
son. What the ending doesn't address, however, is what happens to "Scott Calvin" the human.
You know — the guy with a house and a job and, presumably, a series of public
records that include paying taxes, having a driver's license, and owning property.
Later films in the franchise confirm that Scott still maintains his civilian identity
in some form, as he occasionally arrives in the human world to visit Charlie, but it's never
explained how far this goes. He could simply be showing up, introducing himself as Charlie's dad,
and then going back home. Weirder still, when Scott first meets Bernard, the head elf tells
him he has 11 months to "get his affairs in order." Does that mean vanish his former self?
Fake his death? Or does Scott Calvin now exist in this weird in-between world in which his identity
is maintained only by diligent, paperwork-managing elves? These are big questions, people.
At the very end of the film, Neil tells Charlie he would make a great psychiatrist one day.
Charlie, however, decides he's gonna walk a different path.
"No, I think I'm gonna go into the family business."
It's a sweet moment, if you disregard the fact that Neil is also his family
and Charlie just burned the poor man's whole life's work with that comment.
But it's also kind of a weird remark to make in the context of the film's story.
Scott became Santa because the last Santa died, and there are no other humans present at the North
Pole. Does Charlie mean he's going to move up there and just live among the elves, or does he
mean that he's just going to wait for his Dad to die and then take over his Santa suit? He's just
a kid, so he's probably not really thinking this through, but if it's the former, how would adult
life proceed for him? If it's the latter, does he not realize that his dad is going to have
to die for him to fulfil his newfound dream? Talk about disturbing implications.
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