The Ultimate Guide to Ending Up on Santa’s “Naughty” List

With Christmas right behind us, we all want to make sure a certain chubby bearded old man dressed in red suede and white fur trim gives us the gift of our deepest, darkest desires next year, whether that’s a new set of SAT practice books or a compliment from our parents. Basically, we want to end up on Santa’s “Nice” list. Well, we, as your helpful saviors, will tell you what not to do this year, to ensure you don’t get on Santa’s bad side!

Here is the ultimate guide of what NOT to do if you want to end up on Santa’s Nice list this year (thank us later):

Typical Procrastination

You run towards the door, finally done listening to your teacher’s yapping for the day. But before you reach the warm embrace of freedom, you hear your teacher say one last thing: “Remember, the project assigned two months ago will be due tomorrow!”

Your first thought is: Project???

You frantically try to activate your two remaining brain cells to recall what was assigned two months ago (I don’t blame you, since two months would make anyone forget), but your memory ends up failing you, so you run to your classmate, asking, “WHAT PROJECT?? WHAT PROJECT?!” 

Your bewildered classmate raises their eyebrows at you and says, “The project where we have to create a two-hour long presentation on the chemical composition of dust particles in our classroom… the one that’s worth 30% of our final grade…”

Your heart sinks as your last remaining brain cell finally gets it together and remembers what your classmate is talking about. You vaguely recall having started it, and relief surges through you as you think, OK, I just have to finish it up since I started it already. You go home and turn on your computer, excited to see the progress you have made so far.

You open the slideshow and… congrats! You finished the entirety of one title slide! Only 120 more slides to go!

Santa sighs, facepalms, and shakes his head, wondering how on earth you could have forgotten something important like that.

A Not-So-Merry Christmas Present

It’s the beginning of December, and you, the kind soul you are, decide to repay your friend for all the help they’ve given you with your homework. The annoyingly sparkly trees in your neighborhood remind you of the holiday that’s coming up, the perfect opportunity for you to give back to your wonderful friend.

You think to yourself, I’ll pick a gift when it’s closer to Christmas, because then I’ll really feel the Christmas spirit and therefore will pick out the best gift possible! Great logic right there! That is until two weeks have passed, and you’ve felt everything from deranged to depressed—everything but the Christmas spirit. Maybe you shouldn’t have procrastinated once again…

You feel reluctant about buying a gift, but remind yourself of all the times you’ve managed to scrape by with your schoolwork, all thanks to your amazing friend. Thus, you head to your nearby Target, and you realize… you don’t exactly know what your friend likes. (Insert Santa shaking his head in disapproval.)

You come across a shelf stocked with mugs, and you think, My friend can use these to drink their hot chocolate! Great idea! One problem: the mugs are all plain and boring. You just know your friend will be disappointed to receive a plain mug from you for Christmas, so you come up with a brilliant idea: a DIY mug-decorating project, personalized just for your friend!

You purchase a mug and a pack of markers. You immediately start utilizing your art skills to their fullest potential. Unfortunately, even your fullest potential wasn’t able to help you draw Santa, and what you end up with is an abomination that looks like a blob of mashed potatoes that had a bad accident with a tube of lipstick. You frantically try to erase the drawing, but that’s when you realize you used permanent markers. Perhaps it would have been better if you had just given your friend the plain mug after all…

Not only did you not know what your friend liked, but you also drew a terrible, unflattering portrait of Santa, who peers through his glasses at you with a displeased expression on his face. Santa gives you pity points after seeing your friend’s reaction to the present, but that doesn’t stop him from scrawling your name underneath the word “NAUGHTY.”

Bringing Coffee into Lab

Don’t you just love having science class first thing in the morning? You wake up early and make your way to the deli that serves the cheapest coffee. Upon drinking that first sip, you feel reinvigorated. Coffee in one hand, book in the other, you try your best to balance on the moving train while thinking about the school day ahead. 

“Oh shoot, I have lab first period! I can’t have coffee there; what should I do?”

You wrack your brain for what to do, and come up with three ideas:

1. Abandon it in a dusty corner and hope it’s still there when you leave the lab.
2. Bring it into the lab and hope the teacher doesn’t notice.
3. Chug it all before class starts.

Due to prior experience, you know that chugging it is a bad idea, having led to some pretty intense potty time not too long ago. You recall spending half the period in excruciating pain as you tried to finish your business, which was not a pleasant memory (am I right or am I right?). 

You also think about all those lonely cups of coffee sitting in a corner just waiting for their owner to finish them, only to be kicked over by a teenage delinquent. They look a little depressing, and you don’t exactly want your coffee to undergo such torment. 

After using process of elimination, you bring your coffee to class with you. Carefully angling it away from the teacher, you walk into class, sit down, and discreetly take a sip of your coffee. Apparently, only you thought it was discreet, because everyone around you stared, which caught your teacher’s attention. You panic and freeze as your teacher looks at you disapprovingly and tells you to dispose of it at once (the coffee, not you hopefully). 

Dejected, you walk to the water fountain, and as you’re about to dump it, an impulsive thought comes to mind, and out of spite, you chug all your coffee in a single gulp. It hits you right then and there that you’d just done something really bad and will regret it in the near future (the very very near future).

Santa can feel your regret all the way from the North Pole and shakes his head at you in equal parts disappointment and sympathy, thinking, What a dumb child.

“Accidentally” Causing a Train Delay

You walk into the train station on a busy morning when everyone is trying to get to school or work or wherever else they’re going. You think to yourself, Oh, what a shame it would be if all these people were late, but it’s not like I’d care if they got in trouble. With a small sadistic smile, you drop your keys onto the train tracks (“accidentally,” of course). Whoops.

“Oh my, I seem to have dropped my keys onto the tracks. Whatever shall I do? Oh, I know, I’m just going to ask the worker in the station to help me get them back!” you say as you walk towards the worker.

After retelling your story to the worker with a couple of (mild) exaggerations, they pull out a walkie-talkie and tell someone to stop the train so they can get your keys. They head to the intercom and make an announcement saying, “The train will be delayed; thank you for your patience.” 

You try your best to hide a smirk as they do this. You can already hear the curses and complaints of the people waiting for the train, and this brings you great pleasure. You lead the workers to where you dropped your keys, and they climb down onto the tracks to fetch them for you. Little did he know, the thing you pointed at wasn’t actually your keys, but just a shiny scrap of metal you spotted. 

The worker turns to you after searching for quite some time, saying that they can’t find any keys and asking if you’re sure this is where you dropped it. You close your eyes and pretend to think really hard for a moment.

“I’m so sorry, I think I actually dropped it over there. It’s just that all these tracks look the same, and I can’t really tell the difference between them,” you say.

The worker lets out a long sigh and moves down the tracks to where you pointed, before beginning their search again. Unfortunately, they find your keys pretty quickly this time.

“Thank you so much! I don’t know what I would have done without you!” you gush as the worker leaves. 

A job well done, you think to yourself. Having caused enough of a delay to ruin the days of who knows how many people, you can kick back and relax while listening to the complaints. It’s like music to my ears. Oh well, that’s just how things are done in New York, you think with a smirk.

Santa looks at his elves, and together, they question this generation of kids. He starts to think about retiring, but Mrs. Claus manages to convince him to go look at the Nice list, which eventually calms him down.

So there you have it! If you’re a good child who desperately wants to end up under Santa’s Nice list, just don’t do these things and you’re all set! And if you’re the mischievous type who prefers causing chaos during Christmas, do these things at your own risk and you’re all set as well! (Don’t blame us if you get caught, though. After all, he sees you when you’re sleeping and when you’re awake…)