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NORTH POLE - Santa Claus today announced that because of recent anthrax contaminations, Christmas gifts for good children all over the world will have to be irradiated before being delivered. This will cause a lengthy delay in gift delivery that will push the materialistic component of the yuletide occasion back to January 10th.

Santa

Santa is also asking for $3.2 billion from the US government for losses it will incur by adding these new safety precautions. This somewhat controversial request is being challenged by critics as just a devious attempt by Kris Kringle to bail out his poorly managed toy empire.

Sabotage was first suspected when several elfin employees of North Pole, Inc. were shown to have fake Swiss passports and were actually Saudi Nationals with links to al Qaeda. Diagrams and notes found in their small arctic apartment indicate that Samir Abdullah Wahad and Wahad Samir Abdullah were conspiring to overtake Santa on one of his Christmas eve delivery runs and pilot the sleigh with eight fully fueled reindeer into FAO Schwartz corporate headquarters in Manhattan.

Precautionary tests by the CDC then uncovered widespread Anthrax contamination throughout North Pole, Inc.’s production facilities. The uncovering of this diabolical plot has led to increased racial profiling of dwarves, midgets and little people of all kinds traveling abroad.

Josh Austin, a representative from the Lollipop League, said, “We just want to insure that our people are not unduly discriminated against. If we should find any gross abuse of our rights as American citizens, you can be assured that The Wizard will dispatch flying monkeys immediately”.

- Clark Brandon