Santa is on the List

As many of you know, I work in television news . While there are many wonderful things about my job, one thing that sucks is that there are no holidays when we do not have a show. The news goes on every night, which means that every day there have to be people there putting it on the air. Today, for instance, while all of you were out shopping, caroling, wassailing, or whatever else normal people with normal jobs do, I was at work, putting together a newscast. And, in the course of my day, I almost became the top story. Yes, boy and girls, today was the day Libby almost killed Santa.

The newsroom in which I work houses both a television and a radio station. Every year on Christmas eve, one of the radio hosts has Santa on as his guest. Now, I don't know if this is the real Santa, but I am hoping not, because this Santa is a jerk. Every year he marches through the newsroom, ringing his bells, and making crass jokes, causing everyone to wish we could hid under our desks. I don't care if he's Santa, he should not be asking our lead anchor, who is in her 50s and very LDS, why she has "been so naughty" this year. It's just skeezy.

This year when we heard the bells we all braced for the onslaught. One of the other producers looked up and sighed "who buzzed that jackass in," she mumbled. He ambled through the newsroom, his beard looking a little worse for wear, making his jokes about men wanting Barbie dolls and women wanting something "only Santa can give them." As I said, skeezy.

Once he was safely in the radio booth we thought we had seen the last of him, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. Oh, how wrong we were.

My show goes on at noon. The radio show in question ends at noon. So, in the middle of my headlines, I heard the bells. One of the crew members ran out from the studio to the newsroom to ask him to quiet it down. After all, the lead was health care, not Santa. Unfortunately this Saint Nick took the admonishment as an invitation to come in and say hello. While we were on air.

Luckily, we had just run a taped segment, so I had 76 seconds to get Santa to his sleigh. I sprang out of my chair in the control room yelling "get him out, get him out" as the Assignment Desk Manager, and the News Director sprang out of their seats yelling the same thing. All three of us converged on him with 50 seconds left to go. None of us were jolly, not at all. That was when I saw fear in Santa's eyes.

He left the building with 27 seconds to spare.

Merry Christmas.