A shocked Ilford resident has described how his neighbour was slain in an unprovoked attack by a knife wielding Santa. “I heard screams from next door and rushed round to find my neighbour, Ashok, lying in a pool of blood, with this soot covered maniac dressed as Santa Claus standing over him,” says Bill Wadder, who was first alerted that something was afoot by strange noises on the roof shortly before the attack. “The attacker had obviously come down the chimney! As I entered, he looked up, said ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ and pushed past me out of the house! I tried to chase him, but he leapt into a waiting Ford Mondeo and made his getaway” Mr Wadder has subsequently been unable to identify the killer from police mugshots. “It was the big white beard – it totally obscured his face,” he explains. “Mind you I did notice that his footwear wasn’t the regular Santa-syle boots – he seemed to be wearing SS-type jackboots! Also, as he ran past me his red jacket flapped open to reveal what appeared to be a Nazi uniform tunic underneath. Come to think of it, he was wearing a swastika arm band as well!”

However, despite Wadder’s recollections of the attacker’s Nazi regalia, the fact that the victim was a British Pakistani Muslim and that the murder weapon – found discarded at the scene – appeared to be an SS dagger, local police remain baffled as to motive. “The victim, Mr Mehmoud, didn’t seem to have an enemy in the world,” says Inspector John Bott, dismissing racist slogans sprayed on Mehmoud’s front door only a few days prior to the attack as simply a prank by local children. “We’re tending toward the theory that this was a random attack by a common-or-garden psychopath.” The police’s scepticism notwithstanding, others have linked the murder of Ashok Mehmoud to another bizarre Yule-themed race attack in North London. “Only a week before the murder, a Jewish-owned bakery in Tottenham which was selling kosher sausage rolls was destroyed in an arson attack, after flaming Christmas puddings were thrown through the window,” claims local Labour councillor Tony Abcock. “Several witnesses saw the assailant and described him as being dressed as Father Christmas, white beard and all, but with a coal scuttle helmet! I can’t believe these attacks aren’t linked!” Indeed, the witnesses to the arson attack even claimed that ‘Santa’ had made his getaway in an old Ford Mondeo with what appeared to be Reindeer antlers tied to the radiator grill, and adorned with flashing Christmas lights.

Abcock has chronicled several similarly Christmas-themed attacks in the area, including the erection of a large, fully decorated, Christmas tree inside a Mosque. “Instead of a star, it had an illuminated swastika on top,” relates the shocked local politician. “There have also been complaints about the behaviour of a department store Santa in Highbury – local parents have been appalled to find that the presents he has been handing out the their children contain copies of Mein Kampf!” Abcock’s suspicions that this sinister Santa might be linked to the race-hate attacks seemed to be confirmed by a recent incident in his grotto. “Santa just went berserk when this young Asian boy was taken in there by his parents,” says Abcock. “He chased the whole family out of the grotto, shouting racist abuse and throwing Christmas presents and decorations at them!” The incident didn’t end there; joined by his elves (all of whom were at least six feet tall with blonde hair), Santa chased the Asian family out into the car park and attacked their car. “They were put through a terrifying ordeal – elves jumping up and down on the bonnet of their car and using that fake snow to spray foul racist insults across the windscreen,” says a clearly angered Abcock. “The bastards were doing Hitler salutes as the family drove away! Worst of all, the local police just treated the whole thing as a joke!”

A series of bizarre Christmas cards sent to the North London Weekly Free Advertiser following the Mehmoud murder, seemed to be trying to provide a warped rationale for the fascist Father Christmas’ campaign of terror. “Basically, they state that he is going to take back Christmas for decent Aryan people, to whom it rightfully belongs,” says Jerry Murton, the paper’s editor, of the cards, which all depict traditional Christmas scenes of racial bigotry. The gist of Santa’s rantings is that traditional Christmas values have been undermined by successive influxes of immigrants, to the point that many local authorities are now refusing to use the term ‘Christmas’ for fear of offending religious minorities. “He reserves his worst venom for non-Christians who try to embrace the spirit of the festive season by putting up decorations and trees,” observes Murton. “He accuses them of trying to steal Christmas and subvert it to their own heathen beliefs!” He believes that the cards would be laughable if not for the chilling threat contained in the most recent: “He threatens to ‘purge’ the season of goodwill by coming down the chimneys of ‘unbelievers’ on Christmas night and cutting the throats of their children while they sleep! He even asks white kids to send in lists of ‘ethnic’ neighbours whose houses they’d like him to burn down!”

Once again, the police have refused to give any credence to the threats, dismissing them as ‘a sick practical joke – probably perpetrated by students’. However, folklore expert Professor Eugne Jingler is more open minded, pointing out that there are strong links between Santa Claus and Nazism. “Whilst most reliable sources tell us that at the end of World War Two many of the top Nazis fled Germany for the South Pole, where they entered the hollow Earth and formed an alliance with the ancient Atlanteans, others maintain that they in fact went to the North Pole,” he explains. “There they found sanctuary with Father Christmas – a powerful icon throughout Northern Europe – whose origins in Druidic fertility rites struck a chord with their own deep-rooted beliefs in mysticism and pagan mythology.” According to this theory, the ailing Santa anointed Martin Bormann as his successor. “Once Bormann took charge, the elves were sent to concentration camps and ruthlessly efficient factories set up to produce Christmas presents instead – there’s no doubt that since the late nineteen forties the quality of gifts has consistently improved,” claims Jingler. “It is said that by breeding with Valkyrie-like blonde Nordic women kidnapped from Scandinavia, they have established an Aryan paradise in the Arctic, dedicated to subverting capitalist society by fuelling its rampant greed and consumerism every Christmas!”

Jingler has no doubt that the sinister Santa menacing North London is an acolyte of the ‘Nazi Santa’ cult. “I recall that a few years ago a neo-Nazi activist from Wealdstone by the name of Tim Letchwater organised an expedition to try and find this frozen Fourth Reich,” he muses. “Despite severe frostbite and being buggered by a Polar bear, he was the only survivor. Found on an ice floe by a Russian ice-breaker, he claimed to have been saved from the bear by a man in red toting a sub-machine gun and sporting a long blonde beard. He was clearly quite insane!” Jingler finds it ironic that Letchwater is apparently now using the figure of Santa to uphold ‘traditional’ Christmas values in the face of ‘foreign’ encroachment. “The celebration as we know it, is itself simply a Christian hijacking of a pagan festival,” he opines. “Surely if he wants to return it to its origins, he should be shooting the Christians and advocating pagan decadence and debauchery?”