A local newspaper in British Columbia accidentally published an advertisement for a Christmas fair that invited children to take photos with “Satan” — instead of “Santa.”
The flub appeared in the Nov. 21 edition of the Comox Valley Record in an ad promoting the town’s holiday parade Dec. 1, and events including a “Gnarly Christmas Fair” and “Pictures with Satan.”
An image of the ad smoldered across the internet, prompting more laughter than fire and brimstone.
“Pictures with Satan are my kind of Christmas cheer!” one person tweeted.
“As someone who’s always been afraid of Santa, this ad captures how I’ve always felt about him,” added another Twitter user.”
The attention prompted the red-faced publication to issue an apology.
“If you don’t know by now about the unfortunate typo… you are one of the few,” the paper wrote in an editorial.
“We often chuckle about the typos we have caught, breathing sighs of relief when the L in ‘public’ or the B in ‘Hornby’ is added by the last set of eyes before going to print. Even those are not always caught,” the editorial read.
“But when it happens in an ad, it becomes all that much more blatant. They are called ‘display ads’ for a reason. They are meant to stand out on the page. This one did that, for all the wrong reasons.”
Still, the Satanic slip, at least, meant that “everyone in the Comox Valley and beyond knows when the Courtenay Christmas parade is,” the editorial stated.
“So there’s that.”