"...okay I like you a lot better than last Santa."

"....I never actually, um, believed in Santa. Ever. My parents think it's bad for parents to lie to their kids. I do like Christmas, though, so, like, if that's reassuring."

"Well, good for you, you shouldn't believe in things if there's no reason to believe they're true."

"OK. Cool. Good. I'm glad we agree on this. So - do I have, like, Santa duties, other than stopping time once a year and delivering presents."

"Well, all the elves are your slaves."

"OK. You're gonna have to help me out here, OK, because I'm very dumb, and I don't super know what that means."

"Well, you tell us to do things, and then we have to do them. --I thought humans had slaves. The last guy owned hundreds of slaves before he became Santa."

"Oh. Yeah, we stopped doing that in, uh, 1865, actually. I do, in fact, know what a slave is, I just - it's a very ambiguous word, in English, in some ways, it covers a lot of different situations, and I'm not super clear on what specific kind of situation this is. Are you, like, magically compelled to do whatever I say, is just not giving you any direct orders going to fix anything, or is this a house elves thing where that's insulting, or - ?"

"The whole world stopped doing that in 1865? How did you guys all agree on that?"

"Well, no, actually, um, I guess I don't really know what nationality Santa was? But I assume he was either European or American, or maybe Canadian, based on his depictions in movies, and I think pretty much everywhere in Europe had already outlawed slavery in 1863, so... America, my country, was actually kind of on the late side, there. And now there's been, like, globalization and the United Nations and I think slavery is illegal pretty much everywhere now. Although I guess the North Pole is not, like, a recognized member of the UN, or anything."

"I think technically we're part of Canada."

"OK. Well. That's good, you could do worse. Slavery is illegal in Canada, you've all been legally free for at least a century. Unless maybe laws about humans don't apply to elves, for some reason, but that'd be dumb. And I don't know if there's some kind of magic - anything, is there a magic element to the whole slavery thing?"

"Elves care a lot about the Christmas spirit, that's part of-- who we are as beings-- and we have to keep Santa happy so that they can do their job as Santa. And Santa knows better than anyone else what the Christmas spirit currently is."

"OK! So you are - magically devoted to the Christmas spirit and I probably have some kind of uncomfortable degree of weird nonconsensual mind control power over you, that's kind of creepy, but you're not, like, magically compelled to do everything I say, or anything?"

"I mean we can have opinions about what the Christmas spirit should be, separate from what it is. I had to lie to children but I still think lying to children is wrong. And yeah I can disobey you, the other Santa just... didn't like it."

"OK! That's - actually plausibly harder to ethically navigate than having a bunch of straightforward magical slaves, but I can probably outperform a plantation owner from the 1860s. Um, feel free to share any of your opinions at any time about anything I do in my capacity as Santa, or about anything else, I guess, and, uh, if I forget not to give you orders and my orders are dumb or you just don't wanna do them, then - don't. OK?"

"I can definitely give you opinions. I have so many opinions."

This is not really due diligence on Not Having Magical Slaves, but they're on the moon right now and he seems to be taking it OK. "Cool! I wanna hear them all in, like, two seconds. First I have to tell you that I have two kids at home, and - do I just take them with me to the North Pole, is that cool, is there, like, elf childcare or whatever?"

"Yeah, we can totally arrange for an elf to watch your kids-- it's a good thing you're married, that makes a lot of things simpler."

"I am not in fact married, they're my niece and nephew. But their parents are dead, so I'm raising them. What would it make simpler?"

"Santa has to be married. It's in the rules."

"What happens if I'm not?"

"Jack Frost becomes Santa and we have the holiday of Frostmas instead."

"What does that.... mean."