"But only if their parents are celebrating Christmas? Or specifically doing the Santa aspects of Christmas? - do you just have psychic knowledge of all of the actions of specifically and only all of the children whose parents celebrate Christmas, or do you know about everyone but you ignore some of them, or what?"

"We only know if children were naughty or nice if their parents are doing Santa."

"OK. Good to know. ...it only applies to children, you can't just be like 'hey, everyone's getting a present this year' and find out what everyone did?"

"It's the spirit of Christmas to bring joy to children, that's one of the things we can't change."

"OK, cool, children only. Are we required to only give presents to nice children? - also is there, like, an objective arbiter of which actions are nice, are you asking God or manually counting them up via twenty-four hour magic snowball surveillance or getting a list handed to you from - I can't think of a fitting source off the top of my head, I should probably stop trying to come up with guesses. But the naughty and nice stuff, is that decided by you or by me or by something else?"

"Santa thought we shouldn't bring joy to naughty children."

"So he added that requirement himself. So you are doing magic surveillance?"

"Yep. There's a team of elves that watches all the children whose parents might do Santa to record whether their actions were naughty or nice."

She is the dubiously absolute commander of the most advanced surveillance and espionage organization in the world. And she can stop time. 

"OK. I don't wanna say anything super definite here, because I don't know exactly how many elves I have or what constraints I'm working under and I'm kind of hesitant to... assign anybody anything, given that I am not really sure they should actually be listening to me at all. But I'm inclined to say we should keep that program and use it to give everyone the presents they need most, regardless of whether they were naughty or nice. Are we limited to one present per child?"

"Nope. Rich kids sometimes get dozens of presents."

"So we can get around the children-only rule and at least make sure that everyone who has a child in their household can theoretically have access to the stuff they need, through their kids. Are we strictly limited to toys?"

"We have to bring joy to children but-- there are lots of children who are brought joy best by things other than toys, and sometimes we can arrange that for them but often we can't."

"Examples? Like, I assume you can't make daddy stop hitting mommy, but if the thing they need is medicine? Books? Crutches? Clothes? Nonperishable food? A house?"

"Oh, sometimes we can make daddy stop hitting mommy."

"What, really?"

"If the dad has the Christmas spirit, we can arrange for him to have a realization that he should stop drinking, or that he should go to therapy, or something like that."

"Huh. That's - probably ethically complicated in some way but also kind of great. I guess I will plausibly want to see if I can invest in getting more people to have the Christmas spirit. Especially people who are making terrible decisions."

"People have to be allowed to refuse the Christmas spirit."

"Well, yeah, and that's really important. But if Christmas is, like, better, then more people'll end up having feelings about it, right?"

"Better like-- we bring joy to more children?"

"Better like, we bring more joy to more children, and also the thing that Christmas pushes people towards is - less of a blind faith in nonsense thing and more of a thing that more people hear and go 'hmm, that just seems really straightforwardly good, actually'. But there can be more joy for more children, as a part of that, I think bringing joy to children is probably a good policy."

"The Christmas spirit is always supposed to be about bringing joy to children."

"Right, OK, yeah, but that's about more than presents, right? You just said, sometimes the thing that brings a kid more joy than anything else is for their dad to stop abusing their mom, or to stop abusing them. Sometimes it's about healthy, loving families, or safe and prosperous communities, or about not being homeless anymore, or about not being stuck in a war zone, or not being sick all the time. Sometimes it's about chasing out fear or anger or despair so there's space in their hearts for joy. And to do that, it has to be a little bit about everyone, right, even if you always put the kids first? What's good for kids is good for people, and what's good for people is good for kids. Are we about that, or are we about dispensing presents to kids who already have almost everything they want?"

"I am totally about that but we are going to have to figure out how to do it by means of doing things around December 25th."

"I am not immediately sure how, but I feel like we can meet this challenge. Or at least improve on what we were left with.

"I do need to figure out what we're working with and how exactly your magic is constrained. And also ideally figure out how to credibly inform everybody that I would prefer not to have a bunch of elf slaves. But I'm all for achieving all of my goals via sappy Christmas movie plots, I really am."