In addition to "Santarchy" in New Zealand, many other stories this week of bad Santas all around the world.
For some reason, many of them seem to be operating in Germany. There were at least three reports of bad Santas there this week, two of them armed. One robbed a furniture store in Ludwigshafen at gunpoint. He filled his Santa bag with cash, locked the two workers in the vault and fled. Another Santa, this one armed with a machine gun, robbed a bank in Tuebingen, but police caught him after a helicopter with an infrared camera spotted him hiding in a nearby ditch. The machine gun was fake, it turned out, like the Santa costume. The third Santa was stopped for driving close to 100 mph, and I guess this was not on the autobahn because he was fined and his license was taken away. A police spokesman said Santa told the arresting officers that he was "in a rush because he still had packages to deliver." Didn’t work, but a good effort.
Another story out of Germany I don’t have time to summarize, so I’ll just say that it contains the phrase "inebriated half-naked Santa," which I guess is actually a pretty good summary.
On Tuesday, Santa robbed a Wachovia Bank in Arlington, Texas and escaped with an undisclosed amount of money. This Santa gets additional creativity points, as he had cut two holes into his Santa hat and during the robbery he pulled it down over his eyes to serve as a mask.