After writing out his Christmas list and sending it off, Calvin wonders if some of his actions over the last year might be perceived as unfairly naughty by Santa. He resolves to journey to the North Pole to meet with Santa to defend himself, with Hobbes acting as his lawyer.
Tropes
- Blatant Lies: Calvin plans to hit Susie with a snowball, but then gets into an argument with Hobbes. Susie overhears him and takes the opportunity to hit him with a snowball. Calvin reasons that by not retaliating, he proves how good he is and that he's deserving of being on Santa's nice list. When he tells his mom about this, she asks why Susie hit him with a snowball, and he leaves out the part where she only did it because he was planning to hit her first and she overheard him.
- Insanity Defense: This is Hobbes' plan as Calvin's attorney. Calvin doesn't approve.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Calvin is laying out their legal defense strategy to Hobbes when they confront Santa, saying that he's the victim of slander and that he's a good, well-behaved kid. He can't even finish his sentence before he sees Susie and starts making snowballs to throw at her.
- Morton's Fork: Calvin can either admit that he was plotting to hit Susie with a snowball and she just got him first, which would obviously negate the 'good' act of not retaliating, or he can lie to his mom, which negates the 'good' act of not retaliating as well.
- Never My Fault: Calvin argues that he's a victim of slander, his bad deeds are just a matter of perception, and that he's being unfairly judged for his behavior. If the strip is meant to be taken as a series of chronological events, we've seen Calvin use his Stupendous Man costume to try to get away with attacking his baby-sitter, run home from school before noon, and steal Susie's favorite doll and try to hold it for ransom. And that doesn't even get into the duplicator arc, which was Calvin's bad behavior hitting close to an all-time peak unless his duplicator actually worked at cloning himself and it really was all because of his clones.
- Noodle Incident: The Trope Namer is mentioned early on.Hobbes: What about the noodle incident?
Calvin: NO ONE CAN PROVE I DID THAT!!
