The skinny behind Santa's weight loss:

TMZ drops the behind-the-scenes bombshell about Santa's alleged P.C. weight drop.
Initial reports of drastic weight loss by Santa for health reasons are proven wrong when St. Nick's confidential medical records, obtained by sheer chance by our TMZ field reporter, Harvey Levin, during a late night break-in at Father Christmas' psychoanalyst's office. "What a piece of luck," Levin said. "It was 3 A.M. and absolutely no one was there. I'm never breaking into another doctor's place of work again during office hours. You live and you learn."

Hours of recordings of Santa's innermost thoughts with his trusted confidant Dr. Sandra Hochheiser were just begging to be listened to by anyone who had the balls to break and enter this private sanctuary. Claus had been going to Dr. Hochheiser for years under the radar so as to avoid the shame, public humiliation and certain ridicule that would follow once any one, adult or child, got even a whiff of his chronic emotional instability.

The first signs that Santa's depression was effecting his work came last Christmas when the "Jolly Ol' Fat Man" left more than 13 million copies of William Styron's Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness as a stocking stuffer for children all over North America. The publishers at Random House were beside themselves with glee that a 28-year-old novel was once again number one on the N.Y. Times Best Seller List. Parents, however, reacted with full frontal horror. Santa's descent into unhappiness was caused by denying his true past, and feeling forced into a line of work that he never really cared for.

Here's the shocker: Santa does not live forever as scientists had previously stated. The cold hard fact is Santa Claus is a lineage handed down from generation to generation. As Levin went on to testify:

"It's hard to believe, especially if you've read any Stephen J. Gould, but it was all there in Kringle the 60th's confidential file. My head was swimming and my knees buckled after I heard the tapes. I wanted nothing more than a comfortable lap to sit on to cushion the shock, but had to settle for the extra wide couch Santa's shrink had custom made for his only client."

Claus' lineage goes way back to early Dutch times and continues through today. Well before a given Santa dies, elves are sent out to find his heir apparent, but many years ago a giant mistake was made by booze-addled elves when they mistakenly brought back a 10-year-old boy, who was really the 16th Dalai Lama of Tibet. Everyone at the North Pole loved him and delighted in his sly sense of humor, but sensed something was amiss when the new Buddhist Santa fired all the reindeer and replaced them with toy poodles and papillons. Rudolph's whole body was red with rage. It was a personal and professional slight to his reindeer pride. First, he was being replaced by a mixed breed papillon named Toby, who wore a "Ross Dress for Less" plastic, blinking red tree ornament for a nose. (And after all the years"Big Red" put in boozing to get the nose naturally.) And second, he felt the new Claus wanted to bust the Reindeer Union. Lama Claus said, "Yes, perhaps...but only for this lifetime."

It took over 35,000 of the combined breeds just to get the damn sleigh off the ground. Outside of an abandoned air strip in the Philippines, there was nowhere to land. Many elderly Filipinos still talk of that Christmas as being the MacArthur landing times a thousand. There was enough wrapping paper left over to build every papier-mâché housing project that currently clutters the city of Manila, and with a bow on top for the more affluent sections of town.

But what of the current Kringle the 60th and the weight loss that has shocked mall goers around the world? Well, once again...elves, this time, dazed from some heavily treated pot, ran into some high tension wires over Brooklyn, New York, electrocuting themselves and the true heir to the Sleigh. Actually, the child didn't die, but the "electrolysis" made it impossible for him to ever grow a beard, a mustache, or eyebrows, so a replacement was needed in short order. More elves were dispatched to retrieve the bodies and continue the search for Santa's replacement. Unfortunately, while prying the horribly charred and unrecognizable remains of their compatriots from the sleigh, they found a nickel bag of what those irresponsible elves had been smoking.
The elves were famished after smoking, and soon found themselves at the World Hot Dog Eating Championship held at Nathan's of Coney Island. And that's where they met Jack "One Armed" Graiman, 12-time last place finisher for the event. Jack also came in dead last against 1,300 starving Muslims at the competition at Nathans of Darfur, where he lost his arm when a speck of mustard stuck to his elbow and it was devoured by a visiting Sudanese family.

That loss did not slow Jack down one bit, or as Jack likes to say, "not one bite." Jack, who weighed in at 385 pounds and stood all of four feet four inches tall--and those four inches didn't have anything to do with his height-- made it clear to the elves he didn't give a rat's turd about winning. He was there for the chow. In point of fact, wherever Jack appeared, he was there for the chow. If he did this "meal" right, it could last him through the next competition and he wouldn't have to appear anywhere for a year--that would give him just enough time to lose the weight and be ready for the next year's event.

That's when the elves made Jack the offer to be the world's Santa. And, without burping, he accepted. The rest, as they say, is the present. Jack found that being Santa meant he could eat whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. It was a dream come true, but it was all too easy. What he had buried deep inside himself was the truth: He really did miss the competition with his fellow gorgers. He missed the smell of the hot dogs and the roar of the crowd. He missed vomiting into a bucket during the competition, and after the competition, and when he went home, and for the weeks following the competition. It made him feel alive: "There's nothing like the feeling of well-being a person has right after the hurling is through, and it's just you, lying naked face up and alone, on a cold tile floor."

"I wanna go back to competitive eating," Jack said to Dr. Hochheiser, "but how can I in the shape I'm in?" Hochheiser jumped at the chance to influence Jack's future in his moment of weakness: "You're my sole client, and frankly, I can't stand another session of your whining. Lose the weight and get back into the fray you fat fucking pig!" The air hung between them, heavy and rancid, like a sauerkraut-smothered hot dog fart. "Did you just let one go?" asked Dr.Hochheiser, to which Jack replied, "Nope, not this time, not me." "Well, it must have been one of mine," she shot back, her face flushed Manischewitz wine red.

Then Graiman's face brightened and an old forgotten twinkle came back into his eye. Just the left eye. He lost the other back in Darfur when a speck on mustard got into it. "Well then," said Kringle the 60th, "I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna drop the weight no matter how hard that will be, no matter what the general public thinks. The next time you see me, I won't be a fat fucking pig." "You may not be fat, but in all candor," Dr. Hochheiser hissed, "you'll still be a fucking pig!" That was Santa's cue, and he did what he did at the end of every session for the last 20 years: He let out a fart that shook the room. Then, he said, "You're no Dr. Melfi, Dr. Hochheiser, but you got what it takes." Then, one- armed Jack lit a match off the seat of his pants and gave it to Hochheiser: "Here, let this burn off my crime. And get yourself a new client. It'd be a shame to let a couch this size go to waste. I hear Frosty the Snowman is going through some tough times."