Santa Baby

Dear Santa,

It's been a rough few years, I'll be honest.

It's been sixteen years since my last confession, 30 since my last wish list.

A hundred since I last slept well.

In thinking about where I must be on your list... I'm feeling pretty even between naughty and nice. Sure, I've done a few things against my better judgement, but life has already dealt me the coal that I earned in those transgressions, and I've lit it up. Paid penance for my sins. And there were times when I've been nice, or mean for nice reasons.

You know what I mean.

You should know my chimney's stuffed up, and I think the HOA has welded a cap over the top, what with the wind storms here on the bluff. The same thing has happened to my heart, unfortunately. I've tried to seal it off, to batten down the hatches during the emotional tempests, but it seems feelings are getting in anyway.

So you shouldn't have any trouble.

This year, I'd love for you to explain a few things to me. No need to gift-wrap, just tell it to me straight.

You've done some miraculous shit before, and I'm not talking about the flying reindeer or the tricks of quantum physics that appear to allow you to gift all the Believers in the span of a single night. I can't tell if you're ubiquitous or scattered, but you do seem to get around.

I'd like to know how we got here – this election, this defection, this eruption of evil. I'd like to know why there isn't a food bank collection at the grocery store by my house, why there was a man in his pajamas walking home last night in frigid temperatures. Why good people can't get or stay pregnant. Why no one is doing anything about Aleppo. Why the truest source of news these days is Saturday Night Live.

What I'm supposed to do with my life.

I'm wondering what kinds of cookies it will take to get a solid answer out of you, or if I have to sit on your lap, or if you even still exist.

How did we twist this story around you anyway? Isn't there a virgin somewhere below, laboring, scared shitless in a barn full of livestock? Isn't the real story a cascade of miracles that started with a woman giving birth? I imagine Mary crying out, as I imagine I would, Sweet Baby Jesus make this pain STOP.

Huh.

The whole thing is perverse, if you ask me. Heads up: the Holy Spirit will come upon you? That dirty bastard. I'm pretty sure that's still a crime in all fifty states. Well, at least for the next month.

English and the double entendre ruin everything.

Or maybe that's my dirty mind.

Dear Santa, even Jesus gave up when he was three years younger than I am right now – how do you do it? How do you persist, in the face of Scrooge and the Grinch and the Zombie apocalypse in Washington? It's got to break your heart to fly through the smog, to leave sick children in the dust, dropping plastic crap fabricated by toddlers in China under the shrine to environmental destruction.

I'm sorry, I know I'm circling the drain here. Let me be frank.

Santa, baby, what we're all wishing for this year is a recount. An asteroid. A miracle.

We'd even settle for the second coming.

Oh.

Wait.

Huh.