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I was nicely snuggled up on my sofa watching another episode of my favourite comedy series for the year, when I heard a loud incessant banging on my door. I feared it would break down my door.

‘Okay, okay, I’m coming, I’m coming,’ I yelled over the TV din, ‘no need to break the door.’

As I got up from the sofa, I realised I had been so enwrapt in my comedy show that I had even forgotten Santa’s yearly visit on Christmas Eve. Glancing at the wall clock, I noticed he was dreadfully late this year.

I opened the door to greet him when I felt a sudden blast of gale-force wind hit me in the face. I struggled to close the wide-open door with all my might against the full force of the wind, shouting, ‘Get in, get in.’ I finally managed to heave it shut once he was safely in.

Santa was drenched. Drenched from his iconic white-crested red hat and white top down to the ends of his black boots.

‘Gosh! What was that?’ I asked.

‘That was a powerful cyclonic storm that hit this coast a few minutes ago. You mean to say you didn’t hear the howling of the cyclonic wind when it brushed past this area a few moments ago? Nor the advance warning that even we in Lapland received two days back. Thanks to the red alert, I changed my flight path and flew at a higher altitude than the cyclone and managed to land here safely. Do you honestly say you weren’t aware?’

‘Honest to God I didn’t,’ I replied, somewhat sheepishly. ‘Of course, I heard on TV news that the Met had warned the people to expect a cyclone with heavy rains and gusty winds heading to this island; I didn’t take it seriously. Though I thought there would be some rain tonight, who would have thought there’d be so much? Furthermore, I was so absorbed in watching my slapstick comedy on TV and laughing my sides out, I hardly noticed its passing.’

Santa interrupted the drift of the conversation and said, ‘Let’s do away with the honours tonight – all that ho-ho-ho stuff – and get straight to business, shall we? Where’s my usual tot?’

I walked to the drinks cabinet and pulled out the best XO brandy I had reserved for such a Christmas Eve. I uncorked the bottle and poured two stiff shots, one for him and one for me. He held it with both hands and gulped it in one go and, placing the glass on the table, said to me, ‘The same again, old boy.’

Once the second round of honours had been served, he began to unwind on the settee in a more genial and calm manner. Rolling the cognac in the palm of his hand and imbibing its aroma, he said. ‘I felt a sudden chill creep up my spine. It must be due to these drenched clothes. Though they are weatherproof, the deluge of rain that fell tonight must have made it exceed the resistance levels. Would you awfully mind if I remove them and dry them by the fireside?

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘In fact, I’ll help you take them off.’

‘Oh,’ Santa said, ‘can you make sure the door is locked? Imagine what a sight I would look if someone suddenly broke in.’ ‘Yes, imagine, indeed,’ I thought as I walked to the door to make doubly sure it was locked and bolted.

What a sight he would look: sprawled on the settee with a glass of brandy in his hands and nothing but his pants to hide his shame. How awkward, how embarrassing it would be for him – and yes – for me, too, should someone suddenly walk through the door.

It would take a lot of explanation to convince a sceptic of his doubts, and the more we tried to explain it was all innocent, he would leave doubting more. As for those with blind faith. They would be offended for testing the faith for trespassing on their beliefs to an extent that is vulgar and blasphemous.

I began to get the shivers myself when the gravity of the situation began to descend on me like a tonne load of bricks. The juicy news would become the talk of the town on Christmas morn, doing the rounds in church aisle pews: ‘Santa Claus is a closet gay.’

Santa’s fears rose to an elevated pitch of alarm. He could see what would happen next. Parents would barricade the chimney entrances. Signboards would be hung on front doors saying, ‘Take your Christmas presents and go. You aren’t welcome anymore.’ He’ll be done for. Santa Claus would be on the Epstein Files. A paedophilic pervert that preyed on little children at dead of night. He was finished. Ruined.

‘Calm down, calm down,’ I said. Since an optimistic thought had suddenly crossed my mind during the time he was sulking and mourning his own funeral. ‘It is not as bad as you think. We hope that things will turn out all right in the end.’

‘What is that?’ Santa asked.

‘It suddenly struck me that though Oscar Wilde described homosexuality from the dock as “the love that dares not speak its name”, today, on the contrary, gays proudly yell out its name, as it’s the fashionable rage in town. Today homosexual or lesbian marriages receive the blessings of the church. On this island paradise where anything goes, they have their own female pontiff, blessed with papal infallibility, the High Priestess, who, come what may, will do exactly as she has decided to decree.’

‘Hang on,’ said Santa Claus, ‘that can’t be right. Marriages must be consummated. If it cannot be consummated, it is void ab initio. The first duty of man is the procreation of the species. That is why God created man and woman, or Adam and Eve, for nothing else but to be as busy as two horny rabbits. Bees do it, birds do it, and even giraffes at dizzy, mind-blowing heights do it. It’s sex that makes the world go round.’

‘What I’m trying to say to you, Mr Claus, is that if the rumour is believed as the Gospel Truth, you have nothing to fear on that score – it’s the truth that is not believed – then, Mr Claus, you have gained entry to the Gen Z world where age or gender or sexual preferences are no barriers to joining the pioneers of the Woke civilisation.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Santa.

‘Yes, I am,’ I replied. ‘Come out of your closet, dump that red Santa kit. Adorn yourself in a multi-colour rainbow outfit, add a slight wiggle to your walk and go out there and face the world and bravely say, ‘I am the new Santa. I have come out of the cupboard at last.’ I announce to the world tonight, ‘I am gay,’ and, what’s more, declare even louder, ‘I am proud to be gay.’

‘Then, dear Santa,’ I continued, ‘instead of people barricading chimney entrances to safeguard their children, childless same-sex parents with nothing to fear will be greeting you with pink posies when you climb down the sootless chimney entrance with your pink-frilled rainbow bag full of a variety of adult toys. If you can surrender to the butterfly change and accept both respect and shame with equanimity, then yours is the LGBTQ world; and, what’s more, you are a person, my child.’

‘LGBTQ world?’ Santa asked. ‘What do those initials stand for? Haven’t heard of such a world.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ I volunteered. ‘The L stands for lesbians, the G stands for gays. The B stands for bisexuals, those who want the best of both worlds. The Ts have left theologians awake all night in a quandary. I’ll tell you why.’

‘If you believed, Santa, that God created only two genders of the human species, man and woman – Adam and Eve – you’ll be surprised to learn that a modern-day archangel has challenged the tyranny of heaven that God, sole reigning, presently holds by creating a third gender, known as the transgender, a hybrid of male and female of the human species, and by surpassing the powers God claims rights to the Divine Throne.’

‘That’s blasphemy,’ Santa was shocked. ‘Pure and raw blasphemy. If I had my way, ‘And what of the Qs?’

‘The LGBT lot have defined them as ‘queer people’. But I ask you, can any lot be queerer than the LGBT lot? My guess is that the reference to ‘queers’ must be to heterosexuals, whose sexual preferences are limited to those of the opposite sex, which the LGBTs must find awfully queer.’

‘I cannot be identified with them. Luckily up to now, no one burst in and found us in a compromising position. I will get dressed in my Santa Claus kit, however wet it is, before anyone comes.’

Soon he was donning his Santa Claus suit, and we resumed the conversation from where we had stopped. With glasses rebooted, I noticed he was staring around my room. The silence was broken when Santa asked, ‘No balloon for Christmas this time? After Ditwah’s advent, is the season so dull this year?’

‘The season has never been merrier,’ I said. ‘At the onset of the season, breathalyser balloons ran out. The police improvised with regular Christmas balloons, but even those ran out. Eventually, it boiled down to a blood test to medically determine alcohol levels in the blood’.

‘But even this was abandoned after a man was involved in a late-night collision with an oncoming vehicle, which left two people with broken legs and a seven-month-old baby girl with serious head injuries. He was subjected to a blood test forty-eight hours after the accident. When the report arrived, he tested negative for alcohol but positive for pregnancy’.

‘The police declared an indefinite period of amnesty for those who drink and drive and announced that until further notice, no one will be charged with the offence of being under the influence of liquor at any public place, due to their temporary inability to prove the charge. Now do you doubt me when I say it is the merriest season I’ve ever known?’

It was Santa’s turn to poke his bag and say, ‘I have brought many Christmas goodies for you. Take your pick, mate.’

‘I have an important friend who has lost his bogus doctorate issued, he claims, from a Japanese university. Without this bogus doctorate, he says, he has been treated as a quack. Is there a similar bogus doctorate to replace the bogus doctorate he lost?’

‘I have some doctorates, but I can’t vouch for their genuineness. To do so will be fraud. I do not have any from Japanese Unis. But I do have some from Oxford and LSE. They are also bogus but look as authentic as can be. I have several others you can distribute amongst your friends to make them look enriched with scholarship and be like walking libraries.’

He inquired whether there was anything else I required, and I said no. He had brought me enough chocolates and bottles of XO brandy by the crate to last for the whole year, and I said, “Thanks, Santa.”

‘Well, I must be off then. Must rush, for I have many relief packages – all marked with the red star of Bethlehem – to distribute to known houses.’

He turned at the door to face me and said, ‘I nearly forgot to wish you well. So let me do it now.’ Taking a swig from the remainder of the glass, he said, ‘I wish you a Merry Christmas and a healthy, prosperous and blissful New Year. I wish all success to your country’s rebuilding programme and I pray for Godspeed.’

‘But remember, while rebuilding your country in brick and mortar, not to forget rebuilding the old values and moral virtues lying beneath the mudslides and resurrecting from the mire the religious and cultural values that this nation once had. Bridges can be rebuilt; culverts can be restored and even corruption can be punished and the guilty can be jailed.’

‘But once immorality seeps in and takes root in the collective conscience of men and women, can its wild weeds ever be uprooted from the fertile soil of this land? This country will not be worth rebuilding if the people have been dehumanised and denied God’s blessings. Do not forget the wrath of God will fall again should the demonic lie continue to prevail.’

Santa Claus placed the glass on the table and began swirling rapidly like an upbeat cyclone; then, with a shriek and a hoot, he was gone.