Scary Santa

TOI report: Father Christmas may be perceived as a scary figure
It is a while ago now, when my daughter was 3 years old. She went to a small pre-nursery school---it was one room, to be exact. It was run by a lady who loves kids, and her own having grown up, found this an ideal way to spend her time.
For Christmas, she organized a treat for the toddlers in her care. She got sweets and small gifts for all the children. She made a small Nativity scene in a corner of the room. She told them the Christmas story. She told them they would all be getting Christmas presents. And then, as the grand finale, a door burst open and in rushed a portly figure in red, his face nearly hidden in a beard and whiskers of cotton wool.
“Ho, ho, ho,” he cried and swung a huge bag from his shoulder. For a moment there was stunned silence. Then it was shattered by a shriek, and my daughter went off into howls of terror. She managed to set off most of the class too. What nobody had budgeted for was the fact that most kids, at some time or the other in their young lives are threatened with a “Buddhha baba”, an old man who takes away disobedient children in a big bag. Parents use that vision to get kids to drink their milk, have their medicine, go to bed---whatever. And here was the menacing ‘baba’ in person!
I thought only non-Christian kids might get scared of Santa, but I saw an episode of Full House in which the twins Nicky and Alex are terrified too, because they are told, "He is watching you, he sees when you are good and when you are bad!"
Note: I don't think I ever raised the spectre of the buddhha baba, though I remember regularly enlisting the services of the colony watchman to get her to take her medicine! He would cajole her in the most avuncular fashion, whereas I wanted him to be a figure of awe!