A Letter to Santa
People stop writing letters to Santa when they grow up, and that is fundamentally rude. I have been guilty of that same thing, but this year I have decided to break the streak and try to see what happens when, as an adult, you engage with the man. This is the conversation we had, shared with permission from the Bearded One.
Hello Santa. Hope all is well with you. I know this is a busy time for you, and I know it’s been a while since I’ve written, but I figured - why not go back to do it now that I am 41 years of age? I have not a lot of things to ask for, even if, as you might know, adults now buy toys more than children now. Not sure what you think about it. Not sure if you have... time to think about this, or anything at all, given the magnitude of your mission. But I just wanted to write and thank you for your service; I like what you do for people, and I hope you keep doing that and that also gives you joy. So… how is life?
-Emilio
Hello Emilio. Of course, I remember you, as I do everyone; you asked for a copy of Donkey Kong Country for Super Nintendo once, and it was not the easiest to track down, but I am listening to that game’s soundtrack right now, and it still slaps. And I do have time. I am a quantum being who sees reality four-dimensionally; time has little importance for me and my associates, which is why we actually like playing Monopoly. Indeed, I have noticed that in the specific point that you’re writing from, adults are very much into toys compared to previous points in your timeline. Let me tell you a secret: adults have always been into toys. But in your era, there is just less shame about it. A bit less concern about… I guess the very idea of what being an adult means. At least in some parts of your planet.
When you were little, that idea was more important: after a certain age, humans had to start acting in a very specific way, or other adults would look at them weirdly. One of the reindeer (Dasher I think) dubbed that “coordinated conformist cosplay” which I thought was a pretty apt description of that specific behaviour. Your people have been tribal by necessity but they are also stubbornly individualistic, something that some of you consider a contradiction, but it’s just one of the paradoxes that make you… you. I guess now you just have better tools to figure that out. That is, this is if by toys you mean like Lego for adults and extremely sophisticated action figures and not butt plugs. Because these other kinds of toys have always been very popular, they just got more hygienic with time.
You know, from where I stand, your entire species is built around the idea of play. But lots of you need to call that a different way because they think that play is for kids. I think Comet has dubbed that kind of person “moron”, but that might be a bit harsh. The fact that you’re finding more ways to play as you age is a sign of sanity, of wisdom, even. And that is why my job is very fulfilling; because there is a desire for it. A true, deep desire for sharing and giving and being surprised. In any case, I do hope you’re also well, and feel free to write again because for real, time has no place where we’re standing.
- Santa
Hey Santa, I thought writing to you might have been a good idea, but this is a bigger success than I would have ever considered. Thanks for answering, and I am very glad to hear that you’re enjoying your timeless pursuit. Indeed, as a creature of linear time, this seems to be an especially strange moment. People seem to be very worried about the state of the world, and, at the same time, incredibly active in creating, doing, and shaping things with a furore that has no precedent. It’s like people have never been more loving and have never hated so much, at the same time. Things are tense, sometimes it feels like everything is on the brink of entering a path of no return towards a sort of total end.
Yet, there are infinite chances to find beauty and generosity, in a constant tornado of chaos. It’s hard to explain, and maybe that does have to do that, as creatures bound by time, it’s hard to keep so much together in our brains all at once. The funny thing is, all of this chaos seems to take a bit of a break during holidays. And it’s weird to think that we can decide to slow down on our rules if we want, but only for a little bit. It’s like we need an excuse for peace. An excuse to work together away from misery. And that seems strange. Not sure if you can make more sense of this than I can - I suspect so - but I am glad that what you do helps with this possibility to pause chaos, at least a little bit.
- Emilio
Emilio, yes, indeed it seems like things are stranger from your point of view, but from mine, what I notice about your time slice is that, compared to what came before, there are just more things. Numerically.
As someone with the ability to see through time and space in four dimensions, which is very useful when you overcook a casserole, among other things, I am also able to see everything at the same time. People have always been absurd, life has always been paradoxical, and humans have, most of the time, been very confused. In the time and place you’re living in right now, you all have way more tools to understand what is around you. And a lot of you are using all of these tools, but you have not yet found ways to make sense of the sheer amount of information, of data, that you can access. The resolution at which you see reality has increased enormously in a very short time and you struggle to digest that level of clarity: up until that moment in time, you have always had some way to fool yourself into believing that you could sum up reality, tame its complexity. You never have and you never will, and you are living through the moment that makes that undeniable.
I can relate, at a much larger scale. Being able to see so much all at once can be overwhelming. It’s good, at times, to look for single acts, to dive into the details. When I do so, I see an extraordinary amount of connections, a lot of people helping other people, and, more than ever, strangers helping strangers. And I also do see a lot of violence and evil; but one thing that is striking is how a smaller number of people creates a massive amount of hurt, while the majority of you consistently work to make things better. Your informational bottlenecks seem to be very bad at giving a sense of just how much you strive to help each other and to inspire you to take that seriously because they make money by surfacing the worst of you. And maybe that slows you down in finding even better ways to come together to do even better things.
As I fly over your cities, I try to mitigate that a bit, by dropping gifts, but receiving is generally not as good as giving, so I think you’re missing out. I can't tell you your future, because I can see infinite and yours is just one of them but I can't tell which - reality is indeed like spaghetti, De Cecco No. 12, specifically.
That said; is there anything you wish for this year? Don’t be shy. Ask away.
- Santa
Santa, good question. This year has given me a lot and taken away some as well, and for the first time since I was younger, it also gave me back a sense of openness and adventure, something I did not expect. I like what you write about time and chaos and uncertainty a lot, and I do wish people could be more accepting of that; in some ways, I would love it if people could more easily stop making most of their decisions out of fear of something inevitable and out of their control. But I know that your gifts tend to be more practical, so I would love the Cowboy Bebop Vinyl Box Set by Milan Records. It comes out next year, technically, but I'll still make it count. If you need something to deliver this specific Christmas, just surprise me. Or, actually, can you take me behind the scenes of your operation? How do you actually deliver all of the gifts? I have heard the legends, but not the details. Thank you; and have a fantastic Christmas.
- Emilio
Hi Emilio, thank you; well, I don't usually discuss the details of our workflow, mostly because some of our methods are not strictly comprehensible by the human brain. But I'll try to sum some of it up.
First off: here at our headquarters we get all of our elves and gnomes to study each one of you very closely to learn about their deepest desires. It's basically like a concierge service, or, if you like, exactly like espionage. We know everything about everyone, and we know what everyone wants, but we also know that we can't all get what we want, or we would just all look like Zendaya. What we work on is to find a happy medium between what people want, and what they need in that specific moment in time. From that moment on, when it comes to kids, what you heard from the legends is basically true. I hop on my sledge, which is powered by what you think of as reindeer, but in truth are cosmic beings capable of tearing the fabric of reality and withstanding an infinite amount of dad jokes, and in a few milliseconds I deliver toys to every child in your planet, and in the other one your government won't tell you about.
It's different from people over 12 or so, I count time differently so your concept of age might not align with ours. But when it comes to older humans, I don't deliver gifts myself, and not everyone gets gifts; only the ones who want them, and open themselves up to the spirit of giving, and receiving, keep that tradition. But we're still very much involved in that process: using our database, we jack into your cervix remotely with nanomachines, and send signals of inspiration to make it as easy as possible for all of you not to give each other garbage gifts. Rudolph is morally opposed to the practice, as he considers mind control, but he's a radical libertarian, and I like to think of it more as something akin to mind... encouragement? Ok, Rudolph might have a point I guess. We might look into protocol and slightly change our methods, but keep in mind that in another strand of the multiverse we physically jack into people's brains with face-huggers-like creatures, so consider yourself lucky.
Anyways, feel free to share all of this, since reality, in any case, is a shared construct and will change again.
Merry Christmas to you as well, and write again soon.
- Santa
