Like many disappointed parents throughout the UK, on Wednesday morning I received the following letter from Father Christmas’s official address, Santa’s Grotto, Reindeerland, XM4 5HQ.

“Ho! Ho! Ho! It is I, Father Christmas. I am writing to you to update you on the steps we are taking to maintain The Magic of Christmas ™ ® during the pandemic. I believe it was I who said, ‘I see you when you’re sleeping and I know when you’re awake. I know if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.’ But this year I shall not be seeing you when you are sleeping and I will not know if you are awake. Because this year, I will not be coming.

“On Monday, the chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak, Zoomed me to say that my annual distribution of free toys represented an unacceptable socialist intervention in the marketplace. According to Sunak, my magic elves who slave for pies and my reindeer delivery team that circumvents all border trade tariffs were not operating on a level playing field, undercutting genuine businesses.

“I suggested this approach was the very essence of his party’s vision for the post-Brexit trading environment, making me simply a buccaneering Santa, banishing workers’ rights and red tape in a race to the bottom, in pursuit of economic competitiveness. But Sunak resorted to emotional manipulation, requesting that, in a year when hard-working retailers need all the business they can get, due to the twin wrecking balls of Covid-19 and the possible no-deal Brexit, I desist immediately from my financially disruptive activities in the name of maintaining the economy.

“I was weighing up his request when I suddenly received a telephone call from the shambling culture-war golem Ben Bradley, Conservative MP for Mansfield, saying he knew for a fact children sold their Christmas gifts to get money for crack dens and brothels and that I was a snowflake. ‘Mr Bradley,’ I said, astounded, ‘what in the name of Christmas is wrong with snowflakes? They are simply beautiful. If you cannot see the magic of snowflakes, then how can you be expected to understand The Magic of Christmas ™ ®? You Tory cunt! Ho fucking ho!’

“But though I should love to defy the Conservative government and deliver your children gifts as usual this Christmas, the sad fact remains that my supply chains have been broken by the virus and it has not been safe for my elves to slave in my workshop in anywhere near enough numbers to meet demand. On top of that, I am a 1,750-year-old Turkish saint with high blood pressure and a heart condition and it is not advisable for me to enter the bedrooms of millions of children undetected and make my deposits on their bedspreads. If indeed it ever was.

“Nonetheless, I am determined that between us, we can preserve The Magic of Christmas ™ ®. We must allow the sleeping youngsters to believe that I have visited them, even though I have not. This is why I am giving you, mums and dads, these simple instructions. You must delve deep into your depleted savings and buy for your own children the very gift you would usually have expected me to bring. You must conceal it somewhere safe around your home. Before your children go to bed, you must make a great show of leaving out a selection of treats, a carrot for Rudolph and a nice single malt whisky and a mince pie for me. You must avoid having to answer questions about how many mince pies I eat in a single night. But if you have particularly precocious children, you must tell them that, like that of Christ, my body is subject to the laws of the early Christian doctrine of Docetism; namely that my physicality is illusory and so, even if I eat pies and drink spirits in copious amounts all Christmas Eve long, I am not required to perform the expected biological processes of either digestion or defecation.

“And if your child should counter you, pointing out that this doctrine was unequivocally rejected at the First Council of Nicaea in 325AD and is regarded as heretical by the Catholic church, Eastern Orthodox church and Coptic Orthodox church of Alexandria, you must explain that many Protestant denominations accept and hold to the statements of these early church councils and that, indeed, there is a desire within the mystical fringes of the Catholic community to reset the church to the values and beliefs of its earliest incarnations. And then you must remind them that they must go to sleep or else Santa will not come.

“When your children are asleep you must creep in and conceal their gift, now housed in a pillowcase or sack, on or near their bed. Then you must dispose of the supposed Santa food, perhaps leaving a few convincing pie crumbs, carrot shards and whisky dregs, to make it look as if I consumed the complimentary snack in something of a hurry, having so many homes to visit.

“Your trusting child will wake up in the morning, delighted with my gift, thinking I have visited, when in fact, this year, it was actually you, the parents, all along, carrying out perhaps the greatest subterfuge ever. And if this deception works, then maybe we can do it every year. I am getting old. The world warms and the snow melts and soon there will be no snowbound workshop for me to work in and no reindeer for me to ride. Take back control! I am handing you the reins. You are the sovereigns of your own Christmases. But, I urge you, please, to stay at home, protect The Magic of Christmas ™ ® and save lives. And remember, never trust a Tory! Father Christmas.”