Headscratchers / 'Twas the Night Before Christmas

• So the nicest man in the world is going to punish an entire town based on one letter to the editor? How did he even have time to read their newspaper?
  • Know-it-all Albert declares that Santa isn't real...in a world where he not only DOES exist, but there's physical evidence that Santa exists, and he makes no secret of it. Albert was the only one who was acting on blind faith!
    • Father Mouse calls the North Pole on the phone to confirm why Santa is skipping Junctionville.
  • For that matter, what exactly was the point of sending the letter to the editor of the local paper? It's never explained what Albert and his friends were trying to accomplish, apart from showing off their vocabularies.
    • Well, they could hardly send a letter declaring their disbelief in Santa to the North Pole, could they?
  • Even assuming Santa does read the local paper, why the heck didn't anyone think to publish another letter explaining that, no, it's just a handful of dorky adolescent mice who wrote the first one? Or have all the kids write new letters to Santa, haul them to the town next door, and send them to the North Pole with a different postmark?
  • Why did the editor even print such an inflammatory letter in the first place? And why doesn't anyone suggest that maybe at least a little of the blame should go on him/her for this lack of judgment? In a world where Santa's existence is a commonly accepted and demonstrable fact, that's a potential libel case.
    • My suspicion is that Santa did know Albert was the one responsible for writing that letter, but his Know-Nothing Know-It-All attitude wouldn't allow him to change. I suspect it was a Batman Gambit on Santa's part—punish Junctionville for Albert's actions, knowing that the mouse would either change his ways and become a better person for it, or spend the rest of his life with the guilt that he destroyed an entire town's Christmas.
• Clock towers are typically very complex structures and machines, yet Junctionville seemed to get one completely built in a few weeks!
  • The clock and its tower were already built. All Joshua Trundle did was make a giant music box and speaker system to connect to the clock tower.
• So the ONLY person people get their presents from is Santa?! The PARENTS can't buy their kids gifts?! They can't buy gifts for each other?! Yeah, Trundle lost business and money, but can't he MAKE gifts for his kids?!
• The Athe-Mouse, or Alpert, or whatever his fucking name is. Why? What was his plan? Please God tell me this wasn't Plan A! Santa is real, this is not a religion or a legend or even a BELIEF this is a demonstrable fact which empirical evidence can prove to be factually true within literal seconds: you can CALL him and speak to his staff! Santa is as real as Brad Pitt or Donald Trump or any other businessman who has a staff of people answering his phone. The Mayor and every adult in the city were so shocked by this letter to the editor sent by Athe-Mouse they built a giant clock tower to try and communicate their sorrow and anger at it and prove to Santa they had no part in this bullshit...it's like if someone wrote a letter saying President Obama was a mythological deity and the mayor of the city made a news conference to tell him "NO! No we don't think that, please Mr. President we're sorry!" and that's literally what happened here BTW. If every single adult and every authority in town is telling you someone exists, and you can communicate with them yourself and see, why in God's name would anyone be stupid enough to ever disbelieve in what is demonstrable empirical fact?! AND HE'S THE SMART ONE IN TOWN! Wow!
  • Albert was book-smart, but he was also a know-it-all kid who didn't realize how his actions were going to affect the town, much less his own family, until they start going hungry. He may not have had a plan beyond "Show people how smart me and my friends are."
• So wait, Albert's own father's plea to open up his heart (and head) to the fantastic with song and pity stories didn't work, but he watches the Clockmaker and his Kids song and all of a sudden he has the epiphany? Does he hate his family or something?
  • He may have had some special regard for Joshua Trundle as an engineer, since he makes clocks. Realizing that someone he genuinely respects is still keeping faith despite everything going wrong is what makes him see that Christmas is deeply important and he has to save it.

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