Santa Claus goes to tech school
With so many gadgets on the market, what’s a Santa to do? Keeping up with the kiddos can be next to impossible; except for Santas in the UK.
Photo by Julie, Dave & Family (Flickr)
Apparently UK Santas need help keeping up with kids these days, and who’s to blame them? From Wii accessories and videogames to cell phones and digital cameras and a million things in between, Santa’s got an easier job at keeping up with who’s been naughty or nice.
Not any more.
In the UK, PC World is offering training to Father Christmases who need an upgrade on their knowledge of the latest gadgets that kids want these days. According to The Sun, in addition to this tech training, “An online helpline has also been set up so that Santas can call experts and ask for technical advice on items including computer games consoles, cameras, and MP3 players.” The Sun also speaks of a recent study that concluded that “only one in 5 Father Christmases had heard of the Nintendo DSi white while less than one in 10 knew about the must-have Sony reader.”
Poor ol’ Saint Nick. But what about Canadian Santas? From what I can see, there’s no such support for our guy; Canadian Santa is on his own. However, UK’s Times Online published a special email helpline address, so perhaps there’s still some hope?
I have to wonder though, how important is it that Santa knows his gadgets? My memories of visiting Santa in a busy shopping mall consisted of sitting on his lap while having our photo taken and then a quick one-sided conversation of me telling him what I wanted, while he simply ho-ho-hoed and nodded in agreement, finishing off our meeting by telling me to be a good girl. Wasn’t that enough? Do we really need our kids engaging in a high-tech conversation with Santa, discussing whether they should upgrade their Xbox 360 Arcade with a 120 GB HDD or if they should ask for an Xbox 360 Elite?
What do you think? Would it make a difference to our kids if Santa could talk tech, or will they still just scream and cry and complain when we force them sit on some old stranger’s lap?
This “old stranger” will go to great lengths to be able to have more than a ” one-sided ” chat with the kids… To have some superficial knowledge of just what it is they’re requesting can be most helpful – especially given an opportunity to whisper it to a parent! A number of years ago, it was becoming awkward to understand the kids because they had seemingly learned a type of shortspeech, which is still prevalent today in the descriptors. But, with a little research, and talking to those few clerks willing to take the time to explain to some bearded old coot who has no intention to purchase, most of the mystery falls away. Each new Christmas brings its own challenges. I’d welcome all the tech help I could get…
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