N.B. Our dear friend the The Sarah has returned with the startling theory!

I’m starting to get a little suspicious about Santa.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I still believe in him! Of course I believe in him. One would have to be entirely foolish not to believe. I have, after all, read my Pascal. And I have small children. Santa’s real all right.

But here’s the thing. I think I know who he really is. I mean, I think I know who he is the rest of the year, when he’s not flying around the world, scampering down chimneys, and dispensing delightful tchotchkes to the deserving.

Consider, my dears, the evidence.

1. His origins and whereabouts are mysterious.

2. We have seen evidence of him, but no one has ever seen the man himself.

3. He is known for his sartorial excellence (Or possibly his peculiarities. I suspect this subtle distinction turns on one’s personal feelings about ermine and red velvet.)

4. He is an appreciator of fine food and drink. Cookies! Milk! Booze! (When I was growing up, Santa expressed a strong preference for a nice single malt.)

5. He is decidedly European in affect, but seems to be most lauded in the US.

6. He has a startling fixation on footwear. In the US he leaves gifts in stockings. In Austria he leaves the gifts in shoes. In Aruba, kids leave shoes filled with food for his horses outside their doors. When the food is eaten, he fills those shoes with gifts. And on it goes. In Belgium, France, Hungary and Germany (where kids apparently polish their shoes in preparation), the Netherlands, Romania, and I’m sure in a lot of places I didn’t manage to google, footwear features heavily in the celebrating of either Christmas or Saint Nicholas’s Day.

And now, my darlings, to the second half of my argument.

I refer you to this very website’s description of our good host. He says of himself that he is, “two parts high-class shoe fetishist, one part Ricky Ricardo, and one part Jacques Barzun, a dash of Ignatius J. Reilly, shake vigorously and decant liberally, and you’ve got Manolo the Shoeblogger.”

Now I ask you! One need not have a PhD in logic or analytical philosophy (and let us be clear that the Sarah does not) in order to figure this out.

Faithful readers, the Manolo is the Santa.

And I’m a 6 ½ B. And I’ve been very very very extremely good this year. And these are tweed Alexander McQueens with sparkly skulls on them. They’re creepy, impertinent, and professorial, much like the Sarah. And they’d add just the right touch to my next discussion of Hamlet.

I’ll leave cookies. I promise.