Hello Santa,
This email will be devoid of niceties and faux camaraderie. You have refused to acknowledge me as the nice and rational boy that I am, so I've elected to disregard the etiquette I would normally employ when talking to my heavy-set, bearded, and benevolent gift-giver. It is always important to remember that respect is earned among men, never forced. The disrespect toward current youth is palpable and animosity abounds. However, you know this. You didn’t eat a single one of the cookies I left out for you on Christmas Eve, and I've not seen any evidence of your existence since I visited you at the Burlington Mall right after Thanksgiving, and we all know that was not a happy encounter. Your supposed desire to get to know the children of the world has fallen on deaf, and angry, ears. Kids do not even know your name and are never given your email address to establish any sort of communication. How are children supposed to ask you for Madden 2K17 if you don’t give them any way to reach out? I mean, god dammit Santa, have some common sense! Additionally, your egregious paternalism under the guise of "increasing constraints" set by "a global economic downturn" is disgusting. The children see the current environment, and the economy is not the issue. We're facing a cancer within our world, one that will ultimately destroy the entire Christmas season. In case your acuity has waned in the many years since you have studied on this campus, let me eliminate all ambiguity. You, Santa, are the cancer.
Now that we've reached the proper pitch of frustration, let's chat about your absurd decision to forgo giving me autographed Kobe Air Zooms. As I said above, the economy is not pressuring you. I have been more responsible than ever before in maintaining my status on the Nice List and, if you were honest with yourself, I have done an extremely solid job of being responsible and eating all my vegetables during dinner. I have the utmost confidence that my mother has been communicating with you adequately, and I've unambiguously held up my side of the bargain. However, who gives a fuck about facts when you have unchecked power? When you have the power to (literally) rewrite the rules in order to re-engineer Naughty List membership and spite all of us hard-working kids who have been slaving away to get in your good graces all year, then why shouldn't you?
Well, there's a simple answer here. Santa Claus used to represent all that was good and fun with the Christmas season. You endeavor to turn Christmas into a holiday that only caters to the type of poor, young boys whose parents can’t afford to buy them gold-plated Rolex watches themselves. The Nice List membership has evolved, and I am uncomfortable with that, as it has clearly evolved for the worse. Furthermore, I own a gigantic mansion that was designed with large rooms and open spaces so that it could be filled to the fuckin’ brim every Christmas with presents from your sorry workshop. Oh, I lied. My mansion is currently sitting half-empty because someone was too cheap to buy me the bouncy castle I wanted for the parlor room. For fucking fucks sake, what kind of demon denies a good boy a bouncy castle? Kids are supposed to drink cocoa, enjoy their youth, and make lifelong friendships and memories. And how the fuck are they supposed to do that if they can’t buy the friendship of others through owning cool toys. Like a bouncy castle. Your decisions to repeatedly deprive the children of this Earth of decent gifts, particularly on the most-important gift-giving-day-of-the-entire-year, flies directly in the face of the central tenet of corporate America. Giving us shit gifts this year cripples my social status, and instituting stricter guidelines on who makes the Nice List strikes a blow to the heart of all upper-middle class children in America who pretend to be kind but are really just selfish assholes who have been taught that saying “thank you” to the wait staff that pours their water and picks up their crumbs at The Capital Grille makes them a good person. Well guess what? It fucking doesn’t. And now we have to pay for that. It’s absurd! We are simply a product of our upbringing, and to punish us for this is not only unfair, but unforgiveable.
Here is where things may get personal and where I give you my unwanted advice as a senior who has observed the entire decline of the North Pole. First, stop taking yourselves so seriously. You’re an overweight elderly man running a sweatshop in the boonies and you're probably due for another mid-life crisis. Christmas defines and enhances the childhoods of many well-off young girls and boys who you should want to empower through material wealth and absolutely nothing else at all. Maybe your allegiance is to the parents, and if that is the case you're doing them a disservice as well. The few parents that I've met at playdates express pleasure when observing liveliness and fun in their homes and displeasure when kids hate going over to their house because the quality of their toys is shit. Or, more importantly, they don’t know how to make a decent after-school snack (looking at you Mrs. Jones). Let us observe a constant theme: enjoyment and fun. Why doesn't Christmas have the prestige and allure of the 4th of July? Some may say it’s because the 4th of July celebrates the birth of our nation, freedom, and the sacrifices our ancestors and Founding Fathers made so that we could enjoy the fruits of a democratic republic. Bullshit. Christmas was great because it gave everyone what they wanted without their having to do anything at all to earn it, but you have stripped the holiday of that allure, leaving it second in line.
Additionally, let us quickly address the supposed issue of global inequality. If the reason you are depriving me and my friends of the items on our wish lists and destroying this holiday is to protect and prop-up your investment in the poor kids of the world, then fuck you. Simply, you should never have undertaken the task of getting gifts for all the children of the world if your idea of a pastime is playing Scrooge. I truly hope this is not the case because that is an absurd conflict of incentives at the core of this Holiday, but your reasoning that “$56,000 of gifts is simply too much to spend on one child” breeds suspicion.
Clearly I've burned my bridges with you, and I have no regrets there. All of this needed to be said. I was once a passionate and proud believer in Santa, but that is no more. Christmas had a natural vitality that came from its never-failing ability to give me everything I had ever dreamed of, but your new policies are fundamentally destroying the holiday that we all love. If you find issue with my letter, call me -------------. This is not an empty offer; I actually would like to know the elves and the reasoning behind these egregious changes to a holiday that used to be a tremendously positive part of my childhood experience.
Here's to the last shred of hope that you'll at least buy me those custom Harvard cufflinks I wanted,
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