Yesterday I was Santa Claus. Today I'm an elf, a bloody elf.

            Yesterday, as well as being Santa Claus, I watched a dog being skinned alive. That isn't connected with being Santa. It is however what I'm thinking of as I go about my elfin business. How it yowled and cried and shook. How it still moved when it had no skin to hold it together. How it spilled and flopped, all red-ribbon muscle and thin strings of fat from the heavy shuck of its own flesh.

            Ah, the magic of the internet.

            I don't know why I do it to myself. Why I force myself to watch these snatched recordings - these terrible images, without blinking, without looking away. All I know is that afterwards I don't feel sadness or shame, but a dark, hot kind of pride. I feel like I've earned the right to be alive for a few more days - a few more days free of dead animals and starving children, before my mind drives me back to search again for something to horrify me.

           None of the children here are starving. They're all happy, all healthy, all glad to be getting gifts from Father Christmas. This is a time of wonder for them I guess. For me it's all messed up, because even as I wave a cheery goodbye to them I'm picturing potbellied, wasted children - scared, scarred faces flat on my computer screen. It's sick, I know.

            "And what would you like for Christmas young lad?" That's Leo - I can hear his booming, affected voice through the thin paper walls. Leo has replaced me as Santa - a bizarre kind of promotion. It's now my job to ‘monitor' the exit of the grotto. Quite what I'm there to monitor I have no idea.

            I'm kind of jealous of Leo. Though the costumes are all terrible the Santa one doesn't involve a pointy hat with a feather in it. Plus he's inside the paper walls where teenagers can't point and laugh and throw things at him.

            I wave and smile at a snot-nosed kid toddling from the grotto to meet its adoring parents. It's already ripping open its gift - cooing and squealing with delight. It's an action man, kid. All of them are the same - Action Men for the boys, Unicorns for the girls.

            I could never enjoy Christmas myself - especially jolly old Saint Nick. I thought that somehow he might be real, that he might be magic. But then when I was six I got to meet him and the plastic, toy car he gave me wasn't magic, and it didn't make anything better. Didn't bring my parents back together.

            These kids, like the one excitedly demonstrating his new doll to uninterested parents, they all think he's magical and wonderful and benign, but he's not. He can't fix things once they're broken. All he can do is hand out cheap gifts.

            Still for all his fakery I'd rather be Santa than an elf.

            By sidling round a bit I can look down the side of the grotto to where Kate is managing the crowds. Somehow the costume doesn't look so bad on her. Of course. The queue is still way too long. It's four days till Christmas and the kiddies want to meet the man himself. Want to tell him what they desire for Christmas. Most of all though they want the cheap little token gift he'll give them.

            Kate almost looks like she's having fun. I might be able to relax and enjoy it too, but the light is too bright in here and all I can think of are famine children and war blasted corpses and dogs skinned alive. Still - it's a mark of how much I've grown that I can have all that inside of me and still hold the pretence of a happy little elf. I feel almost proud of that.

            Nearing closing time we hit the first hitch. One kid comes out of the grotto crying and I don't even have time to say anything before he's off - running, squalling across the shop floor to his waiting parents. His cries fill the air.

            In a moment his parents are there and shushing and hugging him. I try not to stare - in fact I try to make myself invisible, but it's no good. I'm the nearest adult dressed as one of Santa's employees. They focus on me.

            "Excuse me," Says the man. They're almost ageless, the parents, or grandparents - could be forty or a hundred. "We were wondering if we could get an exchange on this." He holds up a My Ickle Unicorn ^TM Play set - featuring an inch high, powder blue horsy creature and a plastic rainbow.

            Little Timmy - for that is what I've decided to call him, is bawling in the background. His arm is attached like a limp rope to the woman's hand, but he's sitting on the linoleum, screaming and crying his eyes out. Amongst his yowls I can make out the words:

            "Girly." And, "Action man!"

            Leo probably gave him one from the wrong box. It's the kind of thing Leo would do. I knew he couldn't handle the responsibility.

            "No problem." I say all smiles. "Shall we go and see what Santa has to say." I smile ingratiatingly first at the parents - and then at the brat.

            Little Timmy stops crying immediately and nods a tear streaked face. The shadow of crawling misery in his eyes draws me back once again to those famine children. One dies every three seconds. One's just died right now.

            I lead him into the little corridor built along the exit to the grotto. It's a sort of alleyway filled with all the newest and most expensive toys in glass cabinets. Pester power. Parents have to give their kids what they want - like the children in the videos crying out for water . . .

            Oh, god. Angry heat rolls through me.

            I check around us. We're midway, just at the point where we're sheltered from view from both the store and Santa's chair. Little Timmy is smiling as I round on him and crouch down to his level. And I speak in a hiss;

            "Three thousand miles away from here people are starving. They don't have houses - they don't have a school - they don't have enough to eat. Hell, they don't have anything to eat. Three thousand miles in the other direction someone is being tortured . . . You don't know what that means do you? It means that some very bad people have taken someone's mummy and daddy and tied them up and pulled out their fingernails and broken their bones and shoved red hot iron rods in their eyes."

            Little Timmy starts crying, but it's not the squalling indignance of before - these are real tears, rolling silently down his face. He's not breathing right. Inhale and catch, inhale and catch.

            "These things are happening now, kid. And you . . . you are screaming like it's the end of the world because you didn't get the toy you wanted."

            I suddenly realize that this is real, and that I'm saying these words out loud and to a child and meaning them. There'll be trouble over this. I draw back - afraid suddenly of the damage I've done. You're not supposed to hurt kids, because any damage you do to them lasts for the rest of their lives. And I've hurt this kid - I've bloody broken him.

            I watch him cry in absolute silence for a solid minute - then I say the only thing I can think of;

            "Let's go see Santa."

            But Santa can't fix him, all Santa can do is hand out gifts.