Roger Rabbits with Jim Bunny

NEWS ALERT! Commonsense has crashed in a mad tangle of holly, baubles and tinsel in Christchurch. Santa’s elves were ordered to wear safety belts on their Santa parade float after a health and safety audit of risky, hazardous elf-ish parade behaviours.

Could be the notorious foehns down there – the dry, warm downslope winds that make Christchurch people think weird, and do weird.

And in this case, caused an over-zealous health and safety person having a quiet afternoon to thumb through the minutiae of the manual on the public hazards around Santa parades. Can’t recall the streets being awash with blood and mutilated bodies after previous Christmas parades?

Don’t know how H&S reconciled the fact that 70 floats in the parade travelled at a stop/start maximum of 4km/hr and required seatbelts, but the public bus services getting families to the parade travelled at 50km/hr without seatbelts. Go figure. 

Locals gagged on their disbelief: “absurd, ridiculous”, “burning resources for no gain,” and “health and safety gone nuts”. But why stop there? Let’s play bah-humbug and completely regulate the “ho ho ho” out of Christmas.

Flight plan 

First of all Santa, you will be required to file a flight plan before leaving the North Pole. You can’t gallivant around international air space playing ‘chicken’ with Air New Zealand Dreamliners. Flight plans ensure safe and efficient journeys from take-off to landing. Sleighs and jolly fat men are not exempt Santa.

Flitting around at 30,000ft in the dead of night will now require your rig to have navigation lights – a red light on your port wing tip, and a green light on your starboard wing tip. Nice Christmasy colours, so nothing lost there Santa.

We will also require you to stop off at a ‘commercial vehicle safety centre’ – a weigh station. If you’re dropping off prezzies to every child in the world, we’re concerned about overloading and load security. We will want to see a load manifesto.

We suspect your rig may also constitute an “over dimension vehicle” – more than 3.1 metres wide and 25 long. You would require an oversize load permit, some nice, bright, fluorescent flags and pilot vehicles. You will bear the cost. So, stuff to think about Santa.

I calculate you will be visiting 2,089,400 homes in New Zealand in about 12 hours. So factor in driver fatigue. The presents have to get through, but if you tire Santa don’t drive, don’t risk your life or the lives of others. We’ll be checking your log Santa. In fact, you shouldn’t even be driving during the hours you are normally asleep.

No sleigh bells 

Noise nuisance. There will be no “jolly sleigh bells” and “ho ho hos” after 11pm Santa or we will throw the book at you. Not everyone believes in Santa, and those that don’t want to sleep. If you insist on being generous and jolly, then do it quietly.

There may also be an issue with your reindeer casting offensive matter. They each eat up to 10kg of moss, herbs, ferns, grass, shoots and leaves a day – so what to do with 90kg of processed caribou poop Santa? Don’t make it our problem or we will slap you with a violation.

Perhaps it’s time to update the fleet Santa. Put the reindeer out to pasture and we will do you a good price on nine EVs when you hit New Zealand. Much easier to manage than unpredictable, rutting reindeer.

High Vis and road cones

This year there will be no thrill seeking, no low passes down Devonport Rd Santa. Regulations specify a minimum safe altitude of 1000ft over congested areas. Of course, you will be roof-hopping around Aotearoa which presents its own health and safety issues. That will require some road/roof safety management Santa so wear your high-vis and bring road cones, plenty of road cones. Or we could supply and charge it back to you.

Chimney access 

We would also recommend against accessing houses by way of the chimney. Apart from the obvious soot problems there are personal hazards like fat people becoming wedged. Rescue services come at a cost Santa. And of course, being a non-resident, you would have no claim against ACC if you are injured while being extricated.

So you just might decide to cancel Christmas this year Santa. And while it might be a presentless and joyless Christmas, it will be a triumph for health and safety. Ho bloody ho!