Fat Santa

So where did the department store Santa tradition begin I wonder? I mean who got the hair brained idea into their head, "let's have our fattest minimum wage worker sit his ass down in a chair in a santa suit all day long and have little boys and little girls....(and from what i heard around the proverbial water cooler this last week at work, not so little boys and little girls) hop up onto his lap...and take pictures, charge money etc etc." Whoever it was must have started one of them competition-driven diffusion of demented marketing tactics because they're everywhere....

No other time of the year do people with wild abandon let their precious little ones go sit on a strange man's lap...Am I implying something is not quite as it ought to be in the land of the North Pole....ahem. Of course not. I would not do such a thing. Sully the good name of the great elf named Klaus. Nah. Not I.