The guy who, for millennia, has flown around the world every Christmas to give presents to small children out of the goodness of his heart is dead, and America is in mourning. Deep, deep mourning for a man who inspired millions to, I don’t know, give each other gifts, I guess. Someone on Reddit posted, “I’m so incredibly grateful I lived in a world that included Santa Claus.” Personally, I’m grateful I lived in a world that included oxygen and trees, and an entertainment industry where you can become a millionaire despite looking like your face was dunked in batter by an angry spouse, but to each his own. Now, I have nothing against gifts – I was given them now and then when I was a kid and I had kept my promise to stop torturing the dog. But the assumption everyone had back then, both the adults and the kids, was that gifts were for kids, and when you grew up you moved on to big-boy things like cocaine and never getting married because that’s a form of slavery.

But then two thousand years or so ago, something happened – adults decided they didn’t have to give up kid stuff. And so they pretended that gifts were actually something that grown up people give each other to express human emotions like gratitude and friendship and love. And because America has over 4,500 colleges – which means we need more professors than we have smart people – some dumb people got to be professors by writing theses with titles like All of the Other Reindeer-Rudolf as a metaphor for exclusion in the LGBT community. And now when adults are forced to do grown-up things like buy auto insurance, they call it “adulting,” and act like it’s some giant struggle.

This is all Santa Claus’ fault somehow.

I’m not saying we’ve necessarily gotten stupider although we definitely have and I, Bill Maher, am very smart and would make an excellent king. The average Joe is smarter in a lot of ways than he was in, say, the years before Santa Claus, when a big night out was dying of dysentry and a Carmen Miranda musical. The problem is, we’re using our smarts on stupid stuff.

I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to suggest that Donald Trump could only get elected in a country that thinks Santa Claus was important, and as an entitled white male who’s constantly been rewarded for being a loud-mouthed asshole with ever greater money fame and influence I think I know what I’m talking about . I mean, Santa Claus? What’s he ever done for anybody? Has he embodied the worst caricatures of the liberal elite by basically embodying the Token Evil Atheist from a Left Behind movie? Has he aided the cultural polarisation of an entire nation?

Fuck Santa Claus, I hope he burns.