Linking the mall to the laptop

'He sees when you are sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake".

Most young kids in the United States are presented with the specter a judgmental, all-knowing Santa Claus, such as the one portrayed in the lyrics to Santa Claus is Coming to Town. The idea is that the material goods obtained during the Christmas season, usually placed under a Christmas tree, are not randomly chosen gifts of unconditional generosity; but instead are bestowed based on information painstakingly collected about one's behavior during the course of the year.

Sooner or later, however, the wistful rite of passage comes when kids realize that Santa Claus is not real, and with it, a liberating sense that their behavior is not in fact tracked and rated as closely as once thought.