Open letter to Santa Claus

Dear Santa

It is that time of year. When we all write you letters telling you what we want to find under the Christmas tree. Crafted in our finest handwriting and our smartest prose, we detail all those things that will make us happy. All those things that will magically make our lives a better place if we were just to have them. I say better but that is open to debate. I am not so sure how a bunch of useless tat is going to make my life any better.

Which I suppose is the reason I am writing to you.

Mr Claus, I want a junk-free Christmas. I don’t want no shit. I don’t want no tat under the tree. You know the stuff I’m talking about. Those gifts that have no apparent function beyond being a gift. Wind-up hopping penises, ironic action figures, coffee mugs with dumb slogans and aprons printed with the statue of David. The mindless junk that we give to each other out of obligation rather than love. Presents that when you unwrap them scream out: I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU, I JUST GOT IT BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT YOU DO AT CHRISTMAS!!

Well, Mr Claus, I don’t want any of it. I don’t care to be responsible for any more junk on this planet. I don’t want to be the reason massive machines are churning out line after line after line of plastic crap. The reason blackened smoke stacks billow soot and fumes in the atmosphere. I don’t want to be the reason that the climate is shot. The reason the rivers in China are polluted to fuck. I don’t want to be the reason the polar bears don’t have a home. I don’t want to be the reason the kids are getting arrested in Copenhagen. I don’t want to be that guy. The useless douchebag who has everything but a soul. I don’t want to have my home filled with novelties and trinkets. Frivolous oddities that have no purpose beyond being odd. I don’t want any dumbass shit that came from some site called needapresent.com. I don’t need or want any more Japanese toys for kidults, boob-shaped salt cellars or nifty fold-out rulers that tell me the history of the industrial revolution. I know the history of the industrial revolution. We invented a bunch of machines to improve our world and ended up using them to destroy it instead.

It would be fine if there just were a few of us on this big old planet. But there ain’t. There are billions of us, all writing letters, all wanting more and more stuff. And that’s exactly what it is — STUFF. Nondescript rubbish to fill holes like landfills and the bellies of pelicans, whales and whatever other hole that needs stuffing. Well, I say: Get stuffed! If you do come round this year give my chimney a miss, strike me from the list, I don’t want any more junk. But if you do need to give me something, if somehow it is against regulations not to do it, I’ll take a pair of socks. That’s what we used to give each other when we couldn’t think of anything else. Because socks are useful. We’d say to ourselves, I’m bang out of ideas so I’ll get him some he can use — socks. But not today. Now we think, I have no idea what he needs so I get him something he doesn’t need. Something utterly useless. Then he’ll know I really care. Well, sod you and your trendy Swedish knitted chimp. I need it as much as a chimp needs us cutting down his rainforest to fuel the machine that made that god-awful monkey.

Hope you’re well. Love to the elves and the reindeer.

Your humble friend
David

Ps. Stay off the mince pies, you’re getting fat. Just saying.