"Vaguely? In movies?"

"Santa is the one who shapes what the Christmas spirit is like, based on his or her personal conception of the spirit of Christmas. So if you think it's more about spending time with your family, people open to the spirit of Christmas will find themselves enjoying time with their family more than they thought they would. If you think it's about being kind to the poor, people will give more to the poor. If you think it's about getting stuff, people will line up for hours to get the latest toy."

"Are you telling me that the Evangelicals are just flat-out right that Santa - mind controls people away from the religious aspects of the holiday towards whatever Santa thinks people should be doing. Like, without awareness that Santa is a real person who exists, but."

"Well, basically, except that you have to welcome the Christmas spirit into your heart, if you're closed off to it it doesn't have any effect on you."

"...OK."

That's, you know, still pretty weird but better than nonconsensual mind control.

"Also, you'll have to deliver presents, and art of Santa will start looking like you."

"That's... super weird honestly. - does existing Santa art change, that sounds kind of sad."

"Nope. The last Santa became Santa in 1863, and you'll notice that's about when Santa became a fat jolly man with a beard. The pre-1863 Santa drawings stayed the same."

"Huh. OK. Do I have, like, magic present-delivering powers?"

"You can stop time on December 25."

"Oh. That's... cool."

"I guess we could stop time for you more often but it's not good for humans to have their personal timelines get too far off the regular timeline, even if they are immortal."

"I'm immortal? I - guess that follows from the 1863 thing, but - wow."

"Well, you can still be killed, and in practice Santas don't often outlive elves-- their lives are more dangerous than ours, even though we age."

"So you're... an elf."

"Yep. That's why I can do magic, and why I have"-- he gestures-- "pointed ears."

He otherwise looks like a totally ordinary man in his early twenties.

"What exactly can you do with magic, just, whatever you want?"

"We can do lots of things but not everything-- can't resurrect the dead, can't make people fall in love with each other, can't kill-- and we can do even less if we're acting on our own and not in accordance with the Christmas spirit." 

"OK. So the Christmas spirit - whatever I, specifically, think that is - gives you, like, expanded superpowers. And also you can just, even without that, you can just take people to the moon and keep them from suffocating there."

"Yeah. The Moon is pretty great, isn't it?" He jumps six feet in the air.

"Suuure. So, the last Santa, he never, like, considered asking you to use your nearly boundless powers to, I dunno, found Starfleet? End war in the Middle East? Or are you all already doing stuff like that and my impression that he just kind of delivered presents and made it snow sometimes is wildly off?"

"Well, you know, there's the whole 'childlike faith' thing. If we end war in the Middle East or found Starfleet-- whatever that is-- then it will be obvious we exist and the children won't be able to have completely evidenceless belief in our existence."

He wonders if his smile looks as strained as it feels.

"Is there any... reason, besides the previous Santa's aesthetics, that children need to have evidenceless belief in our existence. Apart from the fact that we are incredibly powerful and if we reveal ourselves and play our cards wrong Russia might decide to nuke us or something. Like, on the other end of that, is there any reason people have to believe in us at all, are we like, feeding off of people's belief in Santa to fuel the Christmas spirit?"

"Absolutely none at all! Except the sheer beauty of children believing in things that as far as they know are total lies!"

He is pretty sure he did not, actually, manage to make that sound nonsarcastic.

Hopefully this human is as bad at sarcasm as the last one.

"OK. So, um, I'm not sure exactly what tone of Christmas movie I've stepped into, so if I go wildly off the rails just wave and go 'hey Karen, the script I have here doesn't say that, could you talk more about giving and love and faith, but I think getting parents to lie to their kids about stuff is kind of a messed up incarnation of the Christmas spirit even if it turns out that they have, inexplicably, actually been leading their children towards the truth all along until their children literally all inevitably lose faith and become jaded adults about the whole thing."