An analysis of more than a hundred thousand documents recently leaked by a disgruntled elf has revealed several surprising facts about the North Pole’s most famous citizen.

· Santa and several top elves colluded to circumvent a ban on Chinese-made toys, despite pressure from the North Pole community to deliver only toys made locally.

· Santa has, over the years, acted to undermine potential successors, privately disparaging one of his nephews as “lazy,” another as “not really committed to the whole Christmas thing,” and yet another as “incapable of growing a beard of the appropriate size, if you know what I mean.”

· Senior North Pole officials were astonished when an elf in Santa’s cabinet proposed halting a long-standing program monitoring pouting and crying. “For years, we’ve been telling people that they’d better not do this,” one said in a confidential cable, “and now we’re removing all restrictions? What’s next? Decriminalizing the failure to watch out?”

· After Santa suffered a serious hip injury, in the late seventies, the Prime Minister of Norway offered him access to several chimneys to conduct entrance and egress exercises.

· A reported mixup in 2004 that brought eleven-year-old Jack Keller, of Seattle, a book of math games instead of a football was not accidental: Santa was sending a message.

· During home visits last Christmas, Santa spied on the C.E.O.s of several Fortune 500 companies, and collected personal data including but not limited to credit-card and frequent-flier numbers.

· The song “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” has more basis in truth than was previously thought; elves worried for years about Santa’s philandering, which began to decrease only recently, after Mrs. Claus discovered an illicit text message from an Arizona school-board member.

· Santa doesn’t enjoy going to certain St. Louis suburbs. “They just give me the creeps,” he told one top elf.

· Most cookies left out for Santa end up being fed to the reindeer.

· In 2007, Santa suppressed the delivery of gifts to more than a thousand residents of Los Angeles as a result of his displeasure with the movie “Fred Claus.”

· Just this year, Santa accepted a payment of twelve million dollars to keep Charlie Sheen on the “nice” list.

· A potential environmental disaster was kept secret by the North Pole in 2008, after a large bag filled with painted blocks from Vietnam fell from Santa’s sleigh into the Anglezarke reservoir, in Lancashire, raising fears of lead contamination. Elves with scuba gear and flashlights were sent in to retrieve the blocks under cover of night.

· Contrary to popular belief, Santa cannot really tell when you’re sleeping or when you’re awake, but he will fly into a rage if his ability to do so is questioned. ♦