One of the better Lost theories out there...

Taken from a message board at macrumors.com:

was thinking about the whole Lost thing in the shower this morning, and suddenly I figured it all out! Now stay with me here, it's a little hard to chew on at first, but it goes down easy after that...

* The island is the home of Christmas Village
* The Others are actually Santa's elves, gone mad.
* The "Great Man" is Ol' St. Nick himself
* This expains the naughty and nice list the Others are always working from.
* The elves have gone nuts because they don't spend time making presents anymore--the rampant commercialization of Christmas from the mid-20th century on has put them out of work. "Ben," the head elf, has exploited the situation to seize power but keeps Santa around as an impotent figurehead.
* The giant magnetic field under the hatch is the north magnetic pole.
* That explains why you need a submarine to get to the island normally--you need to travel under the arctic ice (the other way to get to the island is through a warp in space and time when an event occurs--obviously too unstable to use for regular travel.)
* This explains the snow-globe hint at the end of season 2.
* Now we know where the polar bears came from.
* Christmas magic keeps the north pole warm, causing the polar ice to melt in a relatively small radius around the pole, exposing the island.

I could go on and on, but I think you will agree that this really is the most reasonable explanation.

Edit: oh yeah, and Locke is like Tiny Tim from Charles Dicken's Christman Story, with 'is bum leg.