Headscratchers / Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town

• Kris and Jessica's wedding consisted of them putting their wedding gifts under a pine tree and looking up at the stars, while the Winter Warlock prays for a little magic to make the trees glow. The narrator even notes that "Since no church would have them, they stood before the Lord in a grove of pine trees." So technically... they're not legally married?!
  • Yes, they aren't legally married. However, they are sacramentally married.
  • Besides, for all we know common law marriage was legal in "the northern country" at the time. Historically, sacramental and common law were the only sorts of marriage there were; marriage as a specific, secular institution is a very new thing.
• Adding to the above discussion, the Clauses' wedding night was Christmas Eve. This means that Kris leaves Jessica alone on their anniversary every year!
  • Maybe they talked it over when they decided which night of the year he should make his trip, and Jessica assured him that there was no better way to honor their anniversary than carrying out their shared life's work of bringing joy to children.
• Topper the penguin. Even setting aside the fact that he's somehow wandered near the North Pole while searching for the South, why is he the only animal in the show that wears a scarf?
  • Speaking of Topper, let's not get into the fact that 'topper' is a pretty weird word for Kris to randomly blurt out. But when he's trying to find out why the penguin is where he is, Topper bounces around in a way that indicates he's looking for something. What prompts Kris to immediately discern that he's looking for a word which is synonymous with 'stick'?
  • Topper is obviously an adult penguin. Most matured penguins are mated (for life), so he was likely looking for his way back home to his mate. But he apparently abandons the quest permanently after befriending Kris. Did he leave a mate (and maybe a brood of chicks) abandoned forever?
• If the Kringles were the toymakers to the King of whatever country this is (I'm assuming ancient Germany), how does a Burgermeister, a small-time local lord, go over his head in declaring the Kringles enemies of the state? This bugged me even as a little kid. King > Mayor.
  • Maybe Burgermeister was a revolutionary that usurped him. That would explain the guy looking like the king without Only Six Faces: The Burgermeister forced him to be an official.
    • This was always my interpretation to it too: The King had recently been killed in a revolution where the Burgermeister made himself Dictator of the town. The Kringles had abandoned the town for the woods during the revolution, and survived because of it (going the long way, not through the Winter Warlock's Domain). In fact, Kris might be related to the original King in some way.
  • I always thought, just maybe, that while a mortal earthly King is shown, that perhaps the Kringles were somehow toymakers to the King Of Kings when he was a child. But that being too overtly religious for network TV (which cringed at Linus's speech in Charlie Brown) they reduced it to being an unnamed, vaguely-defined King. That, or the King was Charlemagne, ruler over vast parts of Europe - after his death, his regions broke up further and further until local bullies like the Burgermeister ruled, and some of them did openly spurn learning and culture.
  • Tanta seems to speak of their greatness in the past tense. I'd guess that they were the king's toymakers once, but maybe the king died and his successor, whoever that was, had no need for them, forcing them into obscurity.
  • Maybe Sombertown is technically in a different country or has since become independent; it being in the same nation was only slightly implied, and the toy soldiers look like the same time period but different designs to the Burgermeister's own troops.
    • Well, if Sombertown is located in Germany as suggested, it's entirely possible that this wasn't always the case. The border between Germany and France shifted a lot in pre-medieval times, so it could be that the Kringles had been the first toymakers to the king of France and then lost their job when their region became part of Germany instead. Or perhaps they served one of the rulers of a region of what eventually became Germany, e.g. Bavaria, and then when Germany unified their area came under the jurisdiction of the Burgermeister instead of directly answering to the crown.
• Kris is trapped in a dungeon. Kris needs to escape the dungeon. The solution? Feed reindeer corn that makes them fly! How does a flying reindeer help him out of a dungeon?!
  • Maybe it has a skylight that is unseen.
  • Kris could probably get out of the jail itself easily. But then, where to go? The town is loaded with soldiers, his friends are not all as sharp and fast as he, and the people are cowed for the moment. He needed to get out of town and well away from it as fast as... a flying reindeer.
• Toys are supposed to be illegal in this town, to the extent that any family caught with one will be arrested, correct? If that's true, why do the kids take the toys Kris gives them OUTSIDE to play with them?! They, or their parents, know that the Burgermeister frequently goes outside! Wouldn't it make more sense to hide the toys in the house and tell the kids to play with them quietly in their rooms so they WON'T get caught?
  • This occurred to me as well, but then, these are little kids. You wouldn't expect them never to go outside to play. Besides, their environment doesn't encourage normal childhood behavior, so maybe they were so excited just to have toys and get to play.
  • But you'd think their parents would still make them hide their toys when the Burgermeister is present.
• The guards of Sombertown arrested the elves and Winter for helping Kris, and yet they didn't arrest Jessica, who was standing right there and had helped Kris as well. Why?
  • The only thing I can figure is that at that point, they were just using the 'helping Kris' motive as the excuse for arresting the elves and Winter. The real reason the guards arrested all of them was because Kris cared about them and they wanted to keep him in line; they were also the ones who were most likely to try to help him escape from prison. Maybe they hadn't yet worked out that Jessica had also become important to Kris.
  • It's also worth noting that there was no proof tying Jessica to the toymaking operation; the Kringles were famous for their craft, and Winter was a powerful force of magic, so the Burgermeister likely figured he was involved. Jessica did help by delivering the children's letters to the woodland creatures, but no one else in town knew that. Plus as Sombertown's schoolteacher, she may have had a little immunity from the law (there didn't seem to be anyone else in her position).
• Why exactly did the Burgermeister hate toys? It's never really explained; all he says is that he hates toys, and that's about it. What, did toys come to life and kill his parents? Is he trying to mold the kids into little soldiers to take over nearby towns (going back to the above "usurpation" section) and eventually unify Germany under his boot?
  • He hates them because he tripped on a toy and broke his funny bone. His rage against toys is merely the result of wounded pride. Evil Is Petty.
  • Strangely, it appears he hated toys even before he tripped over the toy duck, the tripping just fueling his decision to ban them. Has he had bad experiences with toys before that?
    • Meisterburger is a bitter old sourpuss who can't stand anyone being happier than he is. Toys and play make the children happy, and the sight and sound of their children playing makes the adults happy.
• Near the end of the special, Kris is a wanted criminal so he changes his identity and grows a beard. But he otherwise doesn't change much. He wears the same red suit for example and he still delivers toys under the name "Claus". Even if the Burgermeister doesn't recognize him as Kris Kringle, wouldn't he still consider "Claus" an outlaw? Surely he would not be pleased with him or anyone else delivering toys to the children, since they are illegal. It wasn't until after he died that the toy ban was repealed.
  • That explains why he eventually had to flee to the North Pole, the only place where the law couldn't reach him.
• How come there was no mention of leaving milk and cookies for Santa?
• Why does the Winter Warlock temporarily lose his powers? It might seem to be due to his Heel–Face Turn, but it doesn't happen right away: the first thing he does after turning good is create the magic snowball that lets Kris see whether the children are being naughty or nice.

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