Satan Claus
Part 1 - We Three Demons of Orient Are
It was the 23rd December and as if ordered from upon high, light flakes of snow were festively fluttering down outside the Savoy Hotel.
In the Savoy’s Beaufort Bar, a gentle medley of Christmas piano-accompanied tunes drifted through the lounge bar, courtesy of Alanis Morissette, who, as the album sales dried up, had seamlessly pivoted into a well-rounded hotel chanteuse with surprising grace. At present, her long face was warbling her way through a very respectable White Christmas — so respectable, in fact, that even the mighty Frank might have tipped his trilby in grudging approval, could he have heard it from his cell in the underworld.
The Beaufort Bar — all black lacquer, gold leaf, mirrored panels, and Gatsby-esque opulence — glowed with the kind of restrained luxury only the Savoy ever truly mastered.
Festive 2025 decorations had been arranged with impeccable taste: deep green garlands threaded with warm lights, golden stars gleaming in the dim golden ambience, and a single towering Christmas tree dripping with trinkets and baubles expensive enough to fund an African coup. From the bar counter, the intoxicating smell of cinnamon floated through the room, carried by the gently fermenting cauldron of mulled wine that simmered beside the champagne buckets. The scent mingled with polished wood, citrus zest, and the faintest ghost of Hemingway ordering a machine gun from the concierge.
The Yule “hygge,” as the Danes would say, was painfully perfect.
Seated in the far corner of the Beaufort Bar were two of Mephistopheles’ highest-ranking demons, Peter Thiel and Jeff Bezos casually taking afternoon tea and biscuits, sipping Earl Grey with the serene air of chai connoisseurs.
As is customary for demons “working” in the earthly realm, they had assumed their human forms — in this case, two exceedingly well-known tech billionaires.
To protect the anonymity of the demons in question (and for several pressing legal reasons), we shall refer to the billionaire demons simply as Peter T. and Jeff B.
Their respective ex–special forces PTSD bodyguards lingered in the dimmer corners of the lounge, dressed in Kevlar-weave Ermenegildo Zegna suits tailored to hide the unsavoury reminder that they were armed.
Their bodyguards attempted to look inconspicuous but were betrayed by their constant need to perform “field-craft” theatre — which usually consists of a slow, predatory sweep of the room paired with the ritualistic gesture of touching a finger to an earpiece, even when they had neither an earpiece nor a command centre feeding them intel.
Bodyguards now de rigueur for the everyday billionaire — a necessary deterrent against the great unwashed armed with their black hoodies, “Eat the Rich” banners, and Mangione’s passion for close-combat headshots.
The two demons were here at the Savoy as keynote speakers at the Maximising Christmas Spending 2025 conference in the Lancaster Ballroom. They had an hour to kill before the event started, and they moved to the edge of their leather chairs to have a quieter, more discreet, out-of-character conflab.
“All credit to him, the Dark Lord has really turned Christmas around for the worse. I mean, say what you want about the whole Salem debacle — but our Dark Lord really has made Christmas a boom time for us demons,” whispered Jeff B.
“Agree. We thought we had it made back in the Pagans — midwinter was a respectable riot. A little anarchy, a little wine, a little sun worship, the burning and killing and slaughtering. None of this tinsel-coated wholesomeness,” said Peter T. in a light growl.
Then, swiftly continuing, “Then we had the 3rd Century — no, tell a lie, it was the 4th — those clerical zealots go ruin everything by inventing a birthday for a non-existent god-child, and the whole thing pivots and becomes a celebration of peace, love, and giving.”
“And don’t forget that asinine prick Dickens with his Christmas Carol! That idiot packaged it all up with bows, sealed it, and fed the bullshit back to the masses and they lapped it up: redemption, generosity, family, charity… a whole nauseating buffet of moral uplift. One ghostly intervention and suddenly everyone’s meant to love their neighbours, pay their debts, and treat the poor like human beings. Catastrophic for our business.”
“Bah humbug,” Jeff B. muttered.
The two demons chuckled and revelled in their clever wordplay like two over-coiffured labradoodles rolling in their own faeces. They slowed their reverie and took a sip of their teas — little fingers extended as they gracefully sipped their tea.
Jeff B. fingered the biscuit bowl with disdain and added, “I hate being in this form; human bodies are utterly useless for off-the-cuff decapitations, and I have constant diarrhoea.”
“Agree,” replied Peter T., as he replaced his teacup on the table and picked up the dialogue again. “As I said, our Dark Lord has turned things around in the last ten years. Things have changed: kindness, giving, peace — out.”
“Greed, consumption, indulgence, envy, gluttony, pride, and a healthy dose of self-loathing — very much in. We should be celebrating my old friend.”
Peter T. reached into his leather Berluti bag and pulled out his laptop. He opened the Razer Blade 18, logged in with his eye recognition, tapped a few keys, and dramatically spun the laptop around for Jeff B. to read. On the screen was a slide from his upcoming PowerPoint presentation.
“The numbers don’t lie — see for yourself.”
Jeff B. read the bullet points on the slide:
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Christmas debt is up 25% — The average UK family spends £1,800 of money they don’t have at Christmas. Aggressive debt equals soul conversion.
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6 out of 10 children’s toys have been made by child labour, and 4 out of 10 by indentured slave labour.
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Polling shows: 75% of Christmas gifts are given with self-interest as the main driver — 5% up on 2024
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4 out of 10 toys sold online do not meet regulatory safety laws, with 4 out of 10 being deemed dangerous or toxic.
“You take all the credit for that last one,” Peter T. buzzed.
Suddenly the sophisticated atmosphere in the Beaufort changed dramatically. As Alanis’s soul full rendition of Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree was abruptly cut short as a rotund, bubbly, and impossibly authentic-looking Santa Claus burst into the Beaufort bar with five small elves in tow and boomed a furiously deep, “Ho Ho Ho to one and all!”
Jeff B. recognised the intruder immediately and gave a demonic roll of his eyes and hissed, “For the love of Lucifer, it’s the demon Bishop Richard Gwyn and he is in his ‘human Santa Claus’ form!”
Bishop Richard Gwyn waved as he spotted Jeff B. and Peter T. and made a beeline towards them, barrelling chairs out of the way with his huge red girth as they frantically tried to avoid eye contact with their fellow demon.
“Fancy meeting you two boyos here,” he boomed in an overly jovial accent that hailed from the Rhondda Valley.
Uninvited, the Bishop sank his Santa Claus bulk heavily into the empty leather chair at their table and immediately dived his gloved white hand into their bowl of assorted biscuits and shortbread.
He leaned in, inspected their teacups… and boomed, “Earl Grey, is it? Ho ho ho!”
The billionaire demons’ security teams had moved into action, sensing a healthy Christmas bonus, preparing to neutralise the now-reclining Santa with non-lethal force. But Peter T. and Jeff B. waved them away with a clear, “Stand down — we know this fool.”
Part 2 — The Pitch
Roughly a hundred years earlier, in an auspicious boardroom in Atlanta, Georgia, Coca-Cola CEO Robert W. Woodruff and an assembled gathering of his finest marketing and finance executives eyed the two visiting ad men from Eric Ful & Helheim with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. They were nearing the end of a pitch entitled: “The Essence of Christmas: A Proposal for Eternal Returns.”
At the front of the room stood Eric Ful, owner of the advertising firm, and next to him his creative director Richard Gwyn. The walls were lined with large, colourful storyboards depicting a gloriously round, thunderously cheerful Santa Claus holding the company’s signature bottle of Coca-Cola.
The room warmer for the imagery alone.
Eric Ful was the consummate ad man, and he filled the room, cutting an immaculate figure:
a 1930s tailored black suit, black shirt, black tie, crocodile-skin shoes that gleamed and moved like they were still alive. Everything about him said trust me — in the way a serpent might reassure you that eating an apple carried
no consequences.
His sleek, swept-back hair and perfectly waxed beard conveyed precision and power. The executives could not explain why everything he said felt comforting — as if his soft-spoken southern Texan voice had gently massaged way any doubts they had had like velvet on soft skin.
Richard Gwyn, meanwhile, stood to the side wearing an unnervingly fixed grin — the grin of a hangman’s assistant attending his first public execution and trying, unsuccessfully, to look uncompromisingly professional.
Eric folded his hands and smiled.
“Gentlemen... if y’all will indulge me, and permit me to summarize…”
His southern cadence rolled out warm and slow.
“As you know… due to some — shall we say — unfortunate legal interferences… y’all can no longer rely on your previous core ingredient in your fine beverage. Coca-eeena.”
Eric smiled through teeth that looked like they had tasted raw flesh for breakfast.
“Yes indeed, gentlemen — that there is the d’lemma. Without that persuasive coca-leaf extract in your beverage… how on earth do we keep your customers comin’ back for mo’?”
He let the question drift across the room like incense in a cathedral. The execs felt his eyes dive into their memories — childhoods, secrets, sins — gently rearranging them into something pliable.
“The answer,” he murmured, “is simple…”
“Y’all need a brand champion...a Santa Coke,” Eric declared suddenly, pivoting on his heels sharply to face the execs.
He glided as he walked — not moved, but slid — like a handsome serpent with exceptional sartorial elegance.
“Thats right ‘Santa Coke’. He’s your hook, gentlemen. He’s strong enough, big enough to hang your whole blessed brand on. He’s a figure so pure, so kind, so heart-meltingly wholesome it’ll soften even the hardest of wallets. He’s nothing too holy, mind — but just sittin’ close enough to god and his altar to soak up the shine from him on high.”
Eric paused, hiding his wince at the mention of God, as he slowly sucked the oxygen out of the meeting room.
The executives felt themselves go light-headed.
“And I know what y’all are thinkin’: ‘Well now, that’s clever, Eric — go for that righteous, God-botherin’ dollar.’ That’s one hell of a fat dollar...
...Hallelujah to that?” he called out with the cadence of a Baton Rouge preacher.
A few executives whispered, “Amen…”, and didn’t know why.
“Now imagine the scene, if y’all will… it’s Christmas mornin’. Little Chantilly and Dale are dawnin’. They smell Pappa’s cigar a-burnin’. So their little feet come patterin’ down the stairs, eyes full of hope and wonder.
‘I hope Santa Coke’s been and left us a Coca-Cola,’ they chime in unison. Then they gasp — smiles as wide as the Mississippi — as they see two ice-cold bottles of your fine beverage under the tree, sparkling like jewels amongst the presents. They bend down and see the fine little note Santa’s written for them adorable children:‘I know you’ve been a good boy and a good girl this year, so enjoy a Coke — ice-cold from Santa’s North Pole.’”
Eric placed a hand over his heart, performing sincerity with theatrical majesty. “But then little Chantilly stops. Worried, she turns and looks to her momma and says, ‘Momma… I pray the baby Jesus gets to drink Coca-Cola on his birthday… just like us.’”
Then she looks up to heaven, crosses her precious li’l heart and whispers, “Thank the Lord for Santa Coke,” as she kisses her dear momma on the cheek.
A single executive wiped a tear.
Eric swept toward the storyboards like an evangelist evangelising a miracle.
He leaned forward until the boardroom lights trembled on his slicked-back hair.
“…y’all own it.”
A shocked murmur rippled through the room. Eric’s tongue slid across his lips with slow, ceremonial precision — lubricating the words to come as he held up a piece of paper.
“And if y’all sign this here simple little contract, gentlemen… y’all own Christmas for all of eternity.”
Richard, who had stood motionless — smiled having just witnessed the greatest piece of angelic manipulation imaginable. Eric built to a crescendo.
“This here contract states: Eric Ful & Helheim will provide not merely an image. Not a mascot. But a manifestation. A real Santa Coke will be yours for all eternity.”
He waved the contract at Robert W. Woodruff like a victory flag.
“A real physical embodiment of Christmas.
The taste of Coca-Cola distilled into this heavy, jolly, gloriously overfed tubby man in red.
He’ll be appearing in every country, every city, every town, every household and… every chimney. A figurehead so beloved, so trustworthy, so irresistibly Coca-Cola.”
He spread his arms wide like a crucified Jesus before slowly bringing his palms together as if praying.
Another hush. The executives leaned in so far the table creaked.
“Well, gentlemen… what y’all say?”
The room held its breath. Then Robert W. Woodruff leapt to his feet, face flushed redder than Santa’s jacket.
“YES!” he roared.“YES, BY GOD MAN, YES!”
His executives erupted behind him — clapping, cheering, pounding the mahogany table like zealots at a revival.
Eric Ful smiled knowingly — the smile of a fallen angel who had just underwritten Christmas
with greed — he turned to Richard his southern drawl gone replaced posh Etonian accent and whispered: “I’d say we’d better get you some new business cards printed old boy... You’re the new Satan Claus.”
Part 3 — The EcoNinja
As the lounge bar of the Beaufort was starting to recover from Santa Claus’s buoyant incursion.
Peter T. and Jeff B. were still adjusting to the unexpected presence of their new guest; the red-suited, red-faced Santa Claus or known in the underworld as demon Bishop Richard Gwyn — who was now comfortably slumped across from them, munching healthily on a Viennese whirl whilst greedily eyeing the biscuit bowl for his next victim.
Spotting their looks of horror at his gluttony, he mumbled, “What Boyos! Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep a human form this bloated and fat?” Crumbs fired from his mouth like a biscuit blunderbuss.
“So, Bishop,” Jeff B. ventured, “how long are you planning to do the whole Satan Claus thing? Sorry — Santa Claus. My bad.” He winked at Peter T., who groaned.
Santa swallowed his biscuity mouthful, exhaled long and wearily, and stared off into the distance as if contemplating deeply before answering.
“For eternity, of course, boyo. Underworld jobs like this don’t fall into your lap every century, see. After my dalliance with the chancellery choirboys back in 1582 — I thought I’d be stuck in the Netherworld HR department, loggin’ and shreddin’ for good — I tell you now, this is as close as I’ll ever get to bein’ Asmodeus.”
The billionaire demons nodded in solemn synchrony. “Hmmm.”
Jeff B. leaned forward. “But what about career growth? It’s a bit limiting, isn’t it? Once a year, panic buying and festive misery — have you thought about asking the Dark Lord to expand your Christmas workload? Maybe keeping the whole thing going right through to that fucking resurrection bullshit… Easter?”
Santa snorted and looked around the lounge bar before shouting at a waiter in that loud, booming way that only Brian Blessed and Santa Claus can:
“COCA-COLA ALL ROUND, HO HO HO! You all look thirsty and the drinks are on Santa — Merry Christmas to one and all, and especially to all the ex-servicemen in the bar! HO HO HO!”
With Cokes and a renewed brevity all round,
the mood in the Beaufort had softened considerably.
The private security teams were now in “at ease” mode, locked in a lively debate over who had the higher body count — Chris Kyle or Paddy Mayne.
Alanis was now feeling the seasonal vibe in the room and had launched into Bing & Bowie’s classic The Little Drummer Boy.
Which is why no one noticed the new presence in the Beaufort bar: a lone man in his mid-twenties, dressed in a dark brown hoodie, blue denim jeans, and suede Adidas Sambas. He could easily have been mistaken for one of the new breed of nerd-chic AI billionaires — but he was not.
He was known to his friends, a handful of bots, and the Met Cyber Crime Division across several encrypted Telegram groups as the EcoNinja, he was here for far more demonstrative reasons and another fifteen minutes of protester fame.
As a seasoned protester, the EcoNinja — or Colin Peterson, as he was known during his day shifts on the Tesco meat counter in Redditch — had already achieved a measure of notoriety for an ‘action’ in 2024, when he super-glued his penis to the bonnet of Sir Keir Starmer’s armoured Audi A8 at the EPC Summit.
After a few miles of painfully slow driving, he was finally removed by police — but not before the entire ordeal had been enthusiastically Snap-chatted, reposted, remixed with various AI-generated dancing cats, and set to a surprisingly catchy K-Pop track.
Peter T. and Jeff B. were so engrossed in the laptop screen, chuckling to themselves as they massaged the figures in their presentation for maximum effect — but Santa, always alert to danger, drawing upon his long catalogue of moral perversions from his time as a Bishop, had ‘eyes-on’ the EcoNinja already.
As if on cue, just as Alanis reached her falsetto “pa-rum-pum-pum-pum,” EcoNinja pulled two cans of luminous spray paint from the pocket of his hoodie and shouted, “CLIMATE KILLERS!” as he aimed them like pistols and moved toward Peter T. and Jeff B.
But Santa was already ahead of him. As the young activist lunged toward their table, paint cans aimed squarely at the two demons, Santa leapt into action.
Much like that scene from The Matrix, the bar, the security teams, and the EcoNinja all seemed to move in painfully slow motion — while Santa himself remained in real-time.
Santa grabbed a choice handful of biscuits from the bowl and, as he spun to intercept the EcoNinja, he carefully inserted (in order of the most deadly) an Italian cantuccini, a ginger snap, and a Florentine between the fingers of his white-gloved right hand, transforming the posh dunk-able selection into a remarkably effective biscuit knuckleduster.
The EcoNinja could never have anticipated the force and impact of Santa’s biscuit-laced fist, as
it brutally collided with his face, sending him airborne and backwards three yards before he landed in an unconscious heap — the impact mercifully softened by the amply decorated Christmas tree.
The combined ex-special-forces experience of the demons’ private security teams had every loose inch of the EcoNinja zip-tied like a Christmas turkey before he regained consciousness.
His ‘action’ had come to a untimely premature end as he was dragged out through the kitchen door, wrapped in zip ties and festive lighting, shouting: “YOU ARE ALL MONSTERS!”
Peter T. and Jeff B., still sitting nonchalantly, merely shrugged and shared a nutritiously evil look. Anyone close enough to observe might have noticed a mutual deep red glow of satisfaction in their eyes.
The kerfuffle subsided, and calm and peace were once again restored to the Beaufort Bar.
The piano fired up a soft instrumental version of Silent Night as Santa slowly returned to the table, sat, and added in his low, earnest voice from the Valleys:
“Now then, boyos… listen, right? I do get it, I really do. It’s what you lot are all about these days — takin’ over the world, dismantlin’ democracy, neoliberalism fallin’ on its arse, chaos capitalism, financial oligarchs runnin’ the whole earthly realm. Tidy work, fair play — I get it, I proper do…”
Santa slowly lifted his white-gloved hand, then used the other to pluck a sharp shard of ginger snap still lodged between the glove’s fingers, which he then popped into his mouth.
“…But here’s the thing, see. It’s all so bloody pointless. I’ve been doin’ this gig for the last hundred Decembers — same bloody routine on repeat…”
“I sneak into their houses. I piss on their Christmas trees. I spit on their cookies. I steal their jewellery, I nick the kiddies’ presents, take the batteries out the toys, blah, blah, blah — and give it all a big, hearty: Ho. Bloody. Ho.”
“Then I climbs back into the sleigh — and offs I fuck to the next house. Same old nonsense, see?”
He leaned back, exhausted just recalling it all.
“Then I writes my report to the boss, Mephistopheles — always on time, I’s never late. And what does he do? Straight in the shredder with it — and sends me the same note every year: ‘Well done, Bishop. Keep up the good work.’ Soul-destroyin’, that is, boyo.” He added a wink at his own joke.
Then heaved himself upright, joints creaking, brushed biscuit crumbs from his suit, and gave them both a tired, crooked smile.
“Want my advice?”
“Would a no deter you?” Peter T. retorted.
Santa smailed and ignored the jab.
“Indulge yourself in a bit of sloth. S. L. O. T. H.“
Santa said whilst repeating the last letters individually and slowly for emphasis.
“Keep your heads down, do as lit’tel as you can. Nothing we do changes a bloody thing — let the humans consume themselves, they’ll get there on their own in the end…of days.
End of days, boyo.”
He tapped his finger against the side of his nose as if departing a secret wisdom to the other demons, then glanced around the lounge.
“Now… where the bloody hell did those elves go and get to, then?”
And with that, the demon Bishop Richard Gwyn — also known as the real Santa Claus — bowled off across the Beaufort Bar toward the Savoy’s reception, humming Santa Baby as he went.
Halfway across the room, he purposefully spun and caught Alanis’s gaze, then slithered his black snake-like tongue sensuously at her — a move he’d perfected in a Pontypridd brothel.
Alanis, now standing frozen beside the microphone, stared at him in horrified silence. For reasons of both shock and the iron-clad NDA she’d signed earlier, she found herself both metaphorically and literally — speechless.
