Never mind who’s being naughty or nice, Santa Claus himself supposedly has had bigger problems in Iraq and Syria, where he either did or did not get arrested in the run-up to his big night this year.

Various accounts widely shared in local social media during the weekend before Christmas had Papa Noel, as Christians in Iraq and Syria call him, being arrested by the Iraqi police, drafted into the Syrian army or going off to fight the Islamic State.

The reports grew so widespread that the police in Iraq, a country where sectarian divisions often lead to bloodshed, took pains to publicly deny them.

“A group of sarcastic posts spread talk of the arrest of Papa Noel with a picture written on it, ‘Karbala police arrest Papa Noel,’ and this picture spread on social network sites,” said Col. Alaa Al-Ghanimi, the spokesman for the police in Karbala, the Shiite holy city in central Iraq. “The police command absolutely deny this news and there is no such arrest.”