Drunk Santas

Saturday night Jane had 11 of her schoolmates over for a Christmas party. What's eventful about this is that Jane and a classmate planned the whole party, a great learning experience for toe 11 year olds.. It turned out well. The idea was that each girl was to bring a gift and at the party they would draw names to match the gift giver to recipient. So no one new which gift she would receive.
I remember such a party in my own child hood. It's a good idea because kids can easily exchange gifts without having to but many gifts for their friends. It rained all day, a cold rain that canceled the Christmas event we were going to go to. One of the girls was to dance in a performance at the event.
The rain also stopped Jane's plans to take her guests to the huge earthen levee on Lake Pontchartrain behind my house. They were going to ride down the levee on cardboard boxes (Whatever that is called?). So I looked on the internet for some kid Christmas party alternatives. One the girls tired and loved is the old scavenger hunt. But this one had a Christmas theme. I found a couple of Christmas scavenger hunt lists on the net and printed them.
So the 11 year old girls divided themselves into two teams to try to see which team could find the most of the items, things like a Christmas cookie cutter, a silver bell, an egg, a red ornament, a red can of soup, a piece of popcorn...all things eclectic and related in some way to Christmas. The people in this neighborhood were generous and nice to the kids as they came back with quite a load. I found a list of Christmas games on the net as well, and they played those, played twister, did karaoke on Jane's karaoke machine, and in general "played" in the house.
I give Santa thanks for making me the father of a girl and not those rowdy boys .These girls were terrific, needing little supervision and getting along famously.
Santa's been drinking on the job! That's right. (The fat old one not me, Santa) must be nervous from all those little kids and their gift request, because reports from New Zealand say he has been seen in public in a drunken state. In fact, a group of 40 or so Santa's in full costume, many of them drunk, rampaged through Auckland, New Zealand yesterday, assaulting security guards and robbing stores. Local media in Auckland called the rampage "Santarchy" because the Santa's threw beer bottles and urinated on cars from an Auckland overpass.
They then rushed through a central city park, overturned garbage containers, threw the beer bottles at passing cars and spray painted graffiti on buildings. When one drunk Santa climbed the mooring line of a cruise line ship, the police ordered him down. Other Santa's there objected when he was arrested and launched an attack on the cruise line security guards. "They came in, said 'Merry Christmas' and then helped themselves." one store owner said.
But Santarchy is apparently an organized rowdy Santa activity tainting the name of the real Santa out there. A spokesperson for those Auckland Santa's said that Sanatarchy is an organized "movement designed to protest the commercialization of Christmas." Three of the Santa's were arrested and charged with drunkenness and disorderly conduct, meaning the only present they will get this Christmas is a stint in an Auckland prison. I doubt if they will Ho, Ho, Ho that.