Dear Santa,

I know that you receive millions of letters every year, but perhaps mine will catch your eye. Please forgive me for failing to observe correct letter-to-Santa protocol; I couldn’t find a red crayon. I hope you won’t find the correct spellings too confusing. As far as the whole “good/bad” thing goes — well, let’s just say that I didn’t watch out, and I cried a bunch of times, and I also pouted rather frequently, but I didn’t commit any felonies or get subpoenaed by Ken Starr or anything. Does that count as “good”?

Anyway, enclosed please find my wish list for Christmas 1998 . . .

1. Please bring me a nice prickly sprig of holly, so that I can stab myself in the eyeball the next time I hear the techno version of “White Christmas.”

2. Please bring me a new hand. My Christmas card list, which began as one humble sheet of paper with ten or twelve names scrawled on it, has undergone this terrifying cell-division mutation into a multi-ream behemoth, larger than the Manhattan residential telephone directory and peopled by distant college acquaintances, work colleagues past and present, career “contacts” that in all likelihood forgot my entire existence five minutes after I left their offices, people who annoyingly handed me their business cards at social functions, siblings of ex-boyfriends that probably hate me, and the occasional good friend, to whom I could just hand the bloody cards instead of carefully affixing a holiday-theme stamp to the envelope since I see them every day anyway, but do I do that? No. I throw their cards into the pile in the wheelbarrow and trundle them down to the post office with everyone else’s. I agonize over what to write in the damn things, too, because I envision the recipient reading the card and rolling his or her eyes at the hackneyed sentiments I have scribbled inside (provided, of course, they don’t stare at the back flap in utter bewilderment – “Hon? Do we know any Buntings?”). And don’t get me started on the vicious writer’s cramp that sets in somewhere around the letter “F” and renders the aforementioned clichés utterly illegible in any case (“Hon? Do we know anyone fluent in Arabic?”). By the time I seal the last card, I look like Bob Dole. Maybe you could throw in a new tongue also, since I have ten thousand paper cuts on my current one.

3. Please bring a clue to all of the parents and grandparents who believe that the three-year-old in their lives will actually appreciate the Furby they paid $500 for on the black market. I have to admit that I wouldn’t recognize a Furby if I got hit over the head with one, but I suspect that a Furby doesn’t really, well, do anything. I don’t think Furbys help kids learn to read, or fine-tune their motor skills, or encourage their creativity. I mean, if the kid really really wants a Furby, I guess Grandma does what she has to do, but before she starts throwing punches at other grown-ups in order to acquire a gift the kid won’t even remember getting, maybe she should think about a copy of Good Night Moon and a set of non-toxic fingerpaints instead. After all, Tickle-Me Elmo can’t get arrested this year, but the kids can gnaw on and throw alphabet blocks for years to come.

4. Please bring the Salvation Army “soldiers” instructions on proper bell-ringing technique. I don’t object to the occasional toll or jingle, but I do not really need incessant and aggressive clanging on top of the usual horn-honking and air brake-squealing I hear every day. We see the uniform; we see the kettle for donations; in short, we get the goddamn point, so if you wouldn’t mind telling Sergeant Wristmaster to ease up on the cocaine carillon, I’d appreciate it.

5. Please bring a stepladder to the aging debutante who held up the line in the hosiery department at Macy’s last weekend, waving her diamonds around and demanding in a deep-fried accent to speak to a manager about the “unacceptable service,” when in fact Lula Belle Harpy herself wasted ten minutes of everyone else’s time complaining about how long she had to stand in line, so that she can get over herself. I don’t know how it works in Houston, but here in New York, we don’t expect to breeze in and out of a major department store on a Saturday in December just because we have more money than God. Oh, and throw in a pair of balls for her husband, so that next time she pitches a hissy, he can do us all a favor and drag her officious butt out of there instead of standing there holding her pocketbook and blushing.

6. Please bring wider sidewalks to Third Avenue, so I don’t have to plunge through a thicket of Christmas trees every time I want to run an errand.

7. Please continue to give parents the ridiculous idea that children who can already feed themselves still believe in you. The chasm between what parents think their kids know and what kids actually DO know always gives me a giggle. Parents think their kids don’t notice that Mommy and “Santa” have nearly identical handwriting; parents think their kids don’t notice that the bite-marks in the carrot thoughtfully left out for Rudolph correspond rather closely with Daddy’s teeth. Kids notice. Kids don’t really mind, but they notice. Yes, kids will still write letters to Santa, because they know their parents will read them. Yes, kids will still clamber up on Santa’s lap at the mall, because they want their parents to overhear them asking Santa for a pony or a Playstation AGAIN, even though their parents have said “no, you cannot have a pony — we live in a three-bedroom apartment, for pete’s sake” and “no, you cannot have a Playstation — you’ll never get any homework done” two hundred times a day for the last year, because kids want their parents to know that they have NOT given up hope, that they STILL want a pony, that they STILL want a Playstation, that they still have faith in their parents, and that they STILL pray with their eyes squeezed tightly shut that they will wake up on Christmas morning and look out the window and see a shaggy little pony named Princess standing in the back yard with a big red bow around her neck, or that they will rumble downstairs and hear, instead of Christmas carols on the stereo, the dulcet tones of the Tekken 3 announcer intoning, “Martial Law — WINS!” In short, kids pretend to believe in Santa because they have to believe that their parents will come through; they have to give their parents an “out,” just in case Mom and Dad break down and decide that even if the kids play Parappa The Rapper until their thumbs bleed, they can still get into a good college.

8. Please bring the Biscuit a successful transfer to a nearby law school. Last year, you brought me this nifty queen-sized bed, but now I have to hang out in it all alone most of the time. Work with me here.

9. Please bring my brother an Academy Award for Most Convincing Simulation Of Enthusiastic Gratitude When Confronted With Fugly Clothing Item Originally Intended For Someone Else. I won’t name names, but certain people in my family haven’t quite grasped the finer points of gift-giving — namely, that perhaps boxing up gifts that others didn’t want, or that others have obviously already worn for quite some time, doesn’t get it done. The “present” they gave my brother last year, a gigantic barn jacket-type garment with a drawstring waist made from some sort of watered teal silk, quite possibly represented the worst gift in the history of Christmas, but my sib rose to the occasion with a virtuoso performance of delighted appreciation. Unfortunately, the givers then thought that they had done well in their choice, but we’ve all pretty much given up hope anyway.

10. Please bring me a Pulitzer Prize for Best Thank-You Note. I have always crafted lovely thank-you notes, casual little letters that throw in a sincere “thanks for the whatever” at the end and actually sound as though I meant to write anyway. But the note I wrote to the nameless relatives, after I opened a box and found one of their daughter’s “pre-owned” sweaters inside, deserves formal recognition. Never mind the fact that, if they had to give me a hand-me-down for Christmas, they could have just HANDED IT TO ME instead of yanking my chain by WRAPPING it — this note could have moved grown men to tears. It did move a grown man to tears, in fact; my father laughed so hard at the florid adjectives I used in describing the nappy old sweater that he cried.

11. Please bring the imbeciles that flame me a spell-checker for their e-mail programs. I get really tired of people calling me a “bich” and expecting me to take them seriously.

12. Please bring me some money so that I can buy nice things for my family and friends.

I have a family and friends, and a place to live and enough to eat, so I don’t really NEED any of the things on this list, but if you get around to even a couple of them, I’d really appreciate it, especially since you SHAFTED ME ON THE PONY for all those years.

Yours truly,
Sarah

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