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“You better watch out, you better not cry.

You better not pout, I’m telling you why.

Santa Claus is coming to town.”

Before I get started with this post, I just want to say that I love Christmas. I love being able to spend time with family, I love giving and receiving presents, and I love all of the cultural aspects of Christmas too (Santa Claus, Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman, etc.) Still, when you look back on some Christmas traditions, it really makes you scratch your head.

Think about it. When we were kids, we were told that an old man named Santa Claus, who lived with elves and reindeer thousands of miles away in the North Pole, was silently passing judgment on our behavior, deciding whether or not we deserved to open toys on Christmas morning. What’s more, there was no hiding from Ol’ Saint Nick, because he could see us while we were sleeping and he knew when we were awake. Talk about an invasion of privacy. It’s a good thing most kids aren’t naturally neurotic, or we’d never have been able to sleep.

Anyway, while I was wondering about Santa Claus and his omniscient gaze, I started thinking about Google. Is there a closer proximation of Santa Claus in the real world than Google? For the first time in the history of civilization, practically all of the world’s collected knowledge is at the touch of our fingertips. From Google, you can find out not just whether someone’s been naughty or nice, but where they live, where they work, what they like, what they hate, how old they are, how much money they make, and much more. If Santa did exist, he wouldn’t carry a long list of paper, he’d just bring a laptop with a wireless internet card (wi-fi gets a little spotty north of Greenland).

The truth is that, thanks to the web, everyone can wield the power of Santa Claus, and not just at Christmas time either. Whether it’s a recruiting manager dismissing a job candidate over a nasty blog comment, or a college admissions officer rejecting an applicant because of an unprofessional Facebook page, we’ve seen the story a thousand times over. It’s about time we realized that how we act online is as important as how we act in real life, if not more so. In the digital age, proactive online reputation management is the surest way to personal and professional success. And for those who ignore it? Well, they’ll be having a Blue Christmas indeed.