Drinking Santa's on a rampage in New Zealand, armed German robber Santa's, disguised, a British St. Nick wanted for flashing and a Swedish vandal in a Santa outfit are giving the big man in red a bad name end of 2005.

Reports of "Bad Santas" breaking the law or otherwise wreaking havoc have been circulating around the world.

Armed with a gun, a man in a Santa outfit held up a furniture store in a German town and forced two cashiers to open the safe. He filled his sack with cash, locked the two women in the safe, locking them up and escaped.

He is still on the loose, but police in Tuebingen, Baden-Wuerttemberg were able to nab a bank robber armed with a machine gun in a Santa Claus costume with the help of an infrared camera and helicopter. They found Santa hiding in a ditch in a nearby forest.

"The machine gun was fake," a police spokesman said. Dressed in a Santa cap, beard and wearing sun glasses, he was wanted for stealing 500,000 euros in several separate bank robberies.

One Santa was stopped by police for driving 150 km/h (90 mph) on a northern German highway, 50 km/h over the speed limit.

"He said he was in a rush because he still had packages to deliver," said a spokesman for the police. They gave Santa a fine and took away his license.

Last week an inebriated half-naked Santa disrupted a Christmas market in Dabringhausen before police intervened.

That incident paled in comparison to what happened in Auckland Saturday when 40 drunken Santa's rampaged through the city center, stealing from shops and attacking security guards in a protest against Christmas becoming too commercial.

In Britain, police said they were looking for a Santa acting suspiciously - a flasher who exposed himself to women. Officers in Swanage on the south coast of England said the flasher had struck a number of times since early December. A week later he exposed himself whilst wearing a Santa Claus outfit.

A British agency recently issued a code of conduct to root out substandard Santa's. "Santa is a magical and cuddly man, not a fat, smelly slob," said James Lovell of the Ministry of Fun agency in London. "He must not smell drunk or have bad body odor."

Last Christmas, a shopping center in south Wales installed a webcam dubbed "Santacam" in his grotto to overcome parents' concerns after several high-profile pedophile cases in Britain.

Click here for a different view on Santa Claus: the Engineers View of the Santa Claus job...