"We simply daren't take the risk," explained one anonymous Store manager, who took time out from moving a display of panty-liners to the top shelf to talk to Utterpants. "Last year two mothers complained that their boys had felt something hard between their legs while they were sitting on Santa's knee. We avoided going to court by the skin of our teeth."
"Did your instore Santa abuse them?"
"Of course not! He had a GameBoy joystick on his lap at the time. But who's going to believe an old man who has made a career out of playing with little girls on his lap in the present climate of kiddie-fiddling hysteria?"

"This is political correctness gone mad," shouted one disgruntled 'Santa' we encountered outside his local jobcentre, who along with 974 other jolly old men in beards and furry hats, will be looking for alternative employment this year. "Next they'll be banning parents taking snaps of their kids at the School Nativity Play in case the pictures end up on porn sites on that Internet thing. I mean what sort of sicko gets turned on by looking at some snotty little brat riding a donkey with a tea towel on his head?"

A question we put to the Rev. Morris Bone (57), a charismatic, ex-pat Ameriacn Tele-Evangelist, whose 'Keep Satan out of our Kids Grottos' campaign, has fuelled the anti-Santa hysteria sweeping Britain's High Streets.
"It's no coincidence that 'Santa' is an anagram of 'Satan," the 300lb Texan thundered righteously. "Don't be fooled by the jovial laugh and snowy beard. These sickos are kiddie-fiddling scumbags who scrounge off the State for 11 months of the year, dreaming of the day when they can walz into a cosy department store and deflower an innocent little girl on their dirty laps. How many unsuspecting tots have told Santa they've been 'naughty', only to have the filthy pervert pull down their panties and grope their little cherries, before sending them on their way reeking of stale fags and cheap cider? You might as well ask a Russian pornogapher to babysit your kids."

His anger was denounced as 'rabid anti-Christmas bigotry' by Stan Shufflebotham (59), who has presided over Harrod's Santa's Grotto every Christmas for the past twenty-seven years. "Who's going to give me another job at my time of life?" he asked, wiping away a tear from his magnificent, snowy beard. "If it wasn't for the kindness of Mr Al Fayad I'd be on the dole with the rest of my profession. As it is I've had to lay off eight elves and turn away kids under sixteen."
"Isn't sixteen a bit too old to believe in Father Christmas?" we asked.
"Not a bit of it," replied Stan, planting a fatherly kiss on the blushing cheek of a teenage girl whose little face lit up when he popped her onto his knee.
"So what do you say to those critics who accuse you and thousands of other men who don fancy dress every December, of being nothing more than a scum-sucking kiddie fiddler who grooms children for sex in exchange for the latest video games or Talentless Slut Barbie dolls?"
"Poppycock!" snorted Stan, as he showed his wide-eyed admirer how to get to the next level on her X-Box. "Look at the way this lovely young lady is wriggling about on my lap and then tell me she's being abused. I don't think you can."

But many mothers take a very different view as we discovered when we spoke to Mrs Sandra Duckworth. "When the girls were small we once spent two bloody hours queuing in a Leeds department store to see Father Christmas. When our turn finally came I was gobsmacked to see Santa was a drunken old git with a filthy beard and damp stains on his trousers," reminisced the forty-two-year-old mother of three bitterly. "We felt used and abused—but the girls seemed to enjoy it. Susie was so excited she wet her knickers. We had the Devil's own job prising her off Santa's knee. Then she kept nagging me to buy her a Harry Potter broom. 'Oh look mum—they vibrate!' So of course we had to buy her one and then her older sister wanted one too, only it had to be the five speed model with the rotating handle. We paid a bloody fortune for those toys and do you know—I never saw either of the girls play with them in front of my husband or I. What a bloody rip-off! The sooner shops get rid of Santas the better."

Critics have suggested that sacking Santas is just a cynical smokescreen to enable greedy retailers to fleece a few extra pounds from shopaholic punters. We put this point to John Finch, the retail director of Debenhams, who were the first chain to boot Santa out of their 425 department stores.
"It would take months to vet all the Santas in our stores with the Criminal Records Office," said the tight-lipped businessman sharply. "It would be gravely irresponsible of us to employ someone who might be a sex offender in a job that involves intimate, physical contact with kids."
"You don't think it has anything to do with the fact that shoppers will spend 30 billion pounds on the high street in December and that sprawling Santa's Grottos eat up valuable floor space?" we asked.
"Nope, it's to stop filthy perverts getting their sick jollies from groping little kids."
"Doesn't it bother you that you're disappointing millions of children?"
"Well, the little monsters will just have to find some other pervert to finger their plum puddings this Christmas, won't they?" countered Mr Finch with a snigger.

But what does the man in the street think about axing a tradition that goes back thousands of years and fuels an orgy of consumer spending that millions of kids look forward to every year, simply to assuage the pedo paranoia gripping the nation?

"Bloody madness!" bristled one retailer we spoke to who relies upon the appearance of Santa at the department store opposite his Adult Shop to draw in extra punters at Christmas. A view shared by most of his customers.
"Sitting on Santa's knee never did me any harm," one middle-aged man in a grubby plastic mac told us as he popped a copy of 'Teen Cumfest Action' into his shopping trolley. Pausing only to bend down to tie his shoelaces as two pretty schoolgirls walked past the shop window in crotch-grazing microskirts, he added cheerily: "The department stores can do what they like. It won't stop me dressing up in my Santa costume for the local Beaver's Nativity Play. I mean you can't disappoint the little angels, can you?"

If you are a British Department store it seems you can.

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Hungry for more Festive fun? read how a Mad German tried to ban Santa Claus
and why Santa is coming twice this year

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