As the song goes, “You better watch out, you better not cry, better not pout, I’m telling you why — Santa Claus is coming to town.” And as we all know, Santa has a particularly unique vehicle for his midnight deliveries: a sled with flying reindeer: Dancer and Prancer (they are sisters), Comet and Cupid (no relation, the names just sound good together), Dasher and Vixen (the fastest pair of the bunch), Donner and Blitzen (Dutch names for “Thunder” and “Lightning”), and of course Rudolph with his nose so bright.
But this is 2024, the fourth year of the Decade of Dementia, and Santa is the one who better watch out for us. That is because the United States is currently having difficulty identifying what is flying around in our airspace. It started last year when we had a high-altitude “weather balloon” fly completely across the country, which turned out to be from China carrying intelligence-gathering equipment.
So, it is not surprising that New Jersey folks are highly alarmed by the number of drones that have been spotted in their state. Since November, there have been 5,000 tips given to the FBI on drone sightings. And these are not just little drones either. Some of the nighttime pictures taken by citizens are of very loud and large tube-like flying machines with two bright bulbs lighting their way. To me, it sounds like a commercial jet’s landing lights illuminating the forward half of the fuselage, and the ‘loud noise’ would be coming from the jet engines; I’m just saying…
Whatever they are, New Jersey is almost ready to go into lockdown because of the fear of these mysterious drones that are flying all over their state. I am afraid that a sleigh with wind-borne reindeer flying in the middle of the night might just be mistaken as a stealth attack from Middle East terrorists or Chinese military units. Sending up our missiles to shoot down Santa might create a worldwide crisis.
It is not surprising that this is happening in New Jersey. It is not the first time the state was supposedly invaded by mysterious predators. On Halloween night in 1938, Orson Welles thought it would be fun to present the story of H.G. Wells’s “War of the Worlds” on the radio as if it was an actual event.
The little town of Grover’s Mill in New Jersey, not far from Princeton University, was where the hostile aliens from Mars would land their deadly spaceships. Target Grover’s Mill, New Jersey? Really? It would make more sense to learn that the Martians read their maps wrong than to imagine the Martians wanting to launch their global attack in a tiny little town like Grover’s Mill. For a few hundred grand, the aliens could have just bought the whole town and spared themselves from all the bother.
On the other hand, I must admit that New Jersey is probably low-hanging fruit for an alien takeover. They certainly would not try it in the big and bright heart of Texas. In this state, newborn children receive their gun permits along with their birth certificates. Texas would blast the Martians away before they could even get their laser beams turned on.
Not sure about Pennsylvania — if the extraterrestrials chose to invade Harrisburg, Philadelphia, or Pittsburgh, their greatest danger would be getting fined for utilizing a flying saucer without a permit. However, if our astral visitors tried to mess with our northern counties of Pennsylvania, the pesky alien predators might find themselves looking down the barrel of 12-gauge shotguns — by the thousands.
Meanwhile, aliens aside, Santa might find himself in a holding pattern for quite a while, given all of the drones blocking his ability to get on top of those houses where all the good children live.
Tell you what, parents, just to be sure you don’t have disappointed, disillusioned children on Christmas Day, you should probably buy your own Santa-type presents for your little ones. It is important to label at least one present from “Santa” as you don’t want your kids to think they fell into the “naughty” category. (Santa Non-Affirmation is the new mental disturbance of the month).
But in all seriousness, let’s try to make this a Merry Christmas, everyone. Let’s try to put aside all the trials and troubles and tribulations that we have had all year and celebrate the amazing gift given to us — a Savior, Christ the Lord.
