Feature Articles

Santa is a Trinity Alumnus?

Our secret reporter ‘London’ strikes again with another shocking revelation

The question has often been asked: what do the people in the Wren Library actually do all day? To the untrained eye, it would appear that all they do is pore over the same musty, dusty, mutually indistinguishable antique books, and that on the few occasions they raise their heads to an angle greater than ninety degrees, it is for the sole purpose of unleashing a purposefully violent glare on chattering students or gawking tourists. But Wren Library researchers recently proved their worth by making the most shocking of Bridgemas discoveries: in the matriculation book for the year 1850, there is an entry under the name of ‘Santa Claus.’

That’s right. Santa Claus is, in fact, a former student of Trinity College, Cambridge; and if his supervisor reports are anything to go by, not a very good one, at that. Because despite his enrolment as a theology student, Santa’s behaviour was anything but Christian. One supervisor report, from December 1850, reads as follows: ‘I am afraid to report that Mr. Claus is quite the worst student I have ever taught at the undergraduate level. He is idle, slovenly and has the most appalling personal habits. Only last week, he arrived at one of his supervisions brandishing a bottle of whisky and a sack of carrots, upon which he proceeded to gorge himself during our discussion of the Song of Songs. He virtually never completes work on time, and when he does, what little he produces is of the most awful quality. In his first essay, he argued that the snake in the Garden of Eden serves as a metaphor for onanism, invoking an idiom popular amongst undergraduates which I believe makes inexplicable reference to a “one-eyed snake”; regardless, I shall not reproduce it here. At our next supervision, when I asked to see his most recent essay, he presented me with a blank sheet of paper. When I ventured to suggest that blank sheets of paper do not qualify as essays, he castigated me for my inability to read invisible ink. He then refused to do any reading, let alone write another essay, for the next three weeks, meaning our supervisions were spent in silent contemplation of my office walls. When, at long last, he did produce another essay, he wrote it in braille, complaining that he had been rendered temporarily blind by a phenomenon known as “week five blues.” And when I am not worried about his work, I am worried about his physical health: because the plain truth is that Mr. Claus has ballooned in size over the course of the last term; a development to which I feel his gluttonous ways may well have contributed. He has become noticeably redder of cheek lately and, furthermore, has neither washed nor shaved since arriving in college. In conclusion, Mr. Claus is repugnant to me in every possible way: physically, morally and intellectually. If he carries on like this next term, I am afraid we shall have no choice but to send him down.’

Faced with expulsion, Santa had reached a critical juncture. Casting about for one last, desperate throw of the dice, he knew what he had to do. At the start of the Christmas vacation, Santa submitted an application for the Dunlevie Fund in which he stated his desire to perform missionary work in Africa over the winter break. Astounded by his sudden change of heart, and wishing to encourage his apparent moral reformation, his supervisor seconded his application and, sure enough, his request for funding was granted. But alas, Santa’s motives were not as pure as they seemed. Once in possession of the Dunlevie Fund money, he used it not to go to Africa to perform missionary work, but instead to move to the North Pole, where he bought eight flying reindeer, an unidentified number of elves, and gifts for every child in the world. That very Christmas of 1850, he went on his first global tour; and it is surely no coincidence that it was only in the mid-nineteenth century that popular depictions of Santa with the red clothing, the silly hat, the enormous beer belly, the great white beard emerged in their modern form. All Santa asked in return was that recipients of his gifts supply him with whisky fuel for his alcoholism and carrots some for him, some for his reindeer. And while we cannot endorse Santa’s fraudulent application for Dunlevie Fund money, we can at least celebrate the fact that at long last, this once-wayward student of Trinity College managed to find his niche. Let us hope, this Bridgemas, that a similarly hopeful fate awaits us all.