Number one, Santa and me are tight, and Father Christmas is down with righting wrongs, after all, he is the spirit of giving and forgiving.

Number two, if the elf shoe fits, wear it, because the way the Woodland vote got twisted on the Internet is the way a number of celebrities have come to meet their untimely demise despite being well and alive.

I think the Internet, and by Internet I mean the often dimwitted rubes who inhabit it on their various devices, sometimes root for the untimely demise of celebrities or twist things around just to prove their point we small town folks are hicks and idiots.

No where in the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald article did it ever say the Woodland Town Board turned down the proposal for fear a solar farm was going to suck up all the sun's energy. That comment was made by a person speaking at a public hearing on the matter and if the Internet even halfway read the story they would understand the town did not vote the matter down for that reasoning.

No, the Internet likes to make up their own stories, find stuff between the lines not even there and will at times just make something up to make others look bad.

I know a thing or two about Internet deceit and spite — fake names used to slide in malicious comments and allegations of racism when a mugshot is not used, either because there was not one sent or the quality was so bad it couldn't be used.

My friend Calvin Bryant, editor of the News-Herald, tells me the story has just spun out of control.

The paper towed the conventional line a meeting story should tow.

But the Internet trolls and imbeciles have embellished — trolls and imbeciles being my words and not his — this story into something it never was.

He received two calls last week, one from California and one from the western part of the state saying the voters of Woodland rejected the solar farm.

Someone out there in Cyber Land conjured a referendum when no such referendum existed and denizens in small town America are again considered hayseed morons because real morons took one little comment and turned it into something it wasn't.

I saw one headline which decried Solar Scandal, which is very misleading because there was no scandal at all. A scandal typically involves kickbacks, conflicts of interest, and perhaps a saucy love triangle not some Cyber Troll who wants a saucy love triangle or more realistically wants to see their Reddit stats skyrocket by flatly misconstruing a story from the legitimate press.

I would love to find the person who spun this matter out of control and burn all his or her devices down.

My guess it's some dude who lives in his parent's basement near the Silicon Valley or Raleigh — you know how folks in Capital City can get a might obnoxious because they live in a city where the governor lives.

He probably maintains a blog called I Eat Cheetos in Tighty Whities and has already seen the Force Awakens 40 times.

But I don't have to worry, because Santa Claus knows who's been naughty or nice and when he arrives at that basement, which smells of stale Hot Pockets, Monster Energy drinks and Funyuns, I think jolly old Kris Kringle will have a few choice words for the Internet imbecile who twisted and distorted the facts of this story.

As the culprit sits in his too-tight Fruit of the Loom briefs, Santa will give him a wedgie full of coals, booger sandwiches and take his Force Awakens stuff to some deserving young'un in Woodland or some other small town vilified by Internet idiots in the past.

Santa don't play, kids, especially when you distort facts.

Merry Christmas to the fine folks in Woodland and throughout the Roanoke Valley! — Lance Martin