Who wrote it? Me, baby. That’s who. ME.

Many years back – ten, or maybe seven thousand &ndash Santa’s face was bald. It wasn’t completely bald; he had bushy eyebrows and white tufts of nose hair that always crept out in spite of Mrs. Claus’s frequent trimming, but a moustache had for some reason never seen fit to grace his face. Santa had bigger things to concern him, so he never gave it much thought.

But Santa had another problem, this one larger: he was allergic to the fine layer of dust that accumulated on cookies while they waited overnight for him. Each bite led to an explosive, roof-rattling sneeze. He ate them anyway because carting gifts to everyone on Earth who believed in him was physically taxing work and he needed the sustenance, but he always risked waking any nearby children.

One Christmas, while descending the 7,147,924th chimney of the night, he spotted a moustache barely tangled in a dusty, unused cobweb. He plucked it out as he slid past and it clung desperately to his upper lip. When he found the sugar cookies left for him by Little Kroger Denblotz, he took a deep breath and brought one to his mouth, bracing for the sneeze. As it neared his mouth, however, his newly acquired moustache reached down and gently brushed away the fine layer of accumulated cookie dust. Santa got his first ever sneeze-free taste of cookie. It was spectacular, as was every other bite of every other cookie he ate that night and has eaten ever since.

(There’s a good story behind the beard, too, but we don’t have the space. Sorry.)