Merry Christmas Santa

Dear Jessica Brennan, last year I wrote a letter to Santa…here it is again but with a few edits.

Love Mum

Dear Santa,

What happened to Christmas? Did you decide to turn it up a notch with a scalable twenty-year business model?

Let’s see, in 1993 the kids will each receive an apple and a toolbox, and slowly by 2014 they will all expect an apple iPad and an Xbox.  Are you entering into some sort of profit sharing deal with the big box stores, cashing in on the loot as it goes out the door?

You have a great business going with millions of loyal customers willing to blindly pay inflated prices for things that fall apart, and items they can’t afford, to give to overweight, privileged people who don’t need anything.  Who wouldn’t invest in that? Your Board of Directors operate Fortune 500 companies and your staff many of whom are automated, your elves if you will, work long retail hours for almost no pay to satisfy the indulged tribe who follow you.  It is pure genius.  Oh and you are not clacking away in some workshop at the North Pole any longer, smacking your thumb with a hammer.  Now you watch how your stocks perform and report to your shareholders. You have your goods made mostly off shore, outsourced to some of the cheapest suppliers, on the backs of the neediest souls known to humanity. You have leveraged your good reputation for generating high revenue to attract all the big names.  Well done, you own the market Santa.

And that’s not all. While you get a lot of word-of-mouth attention you also have every major advertising firm on the planet pumping out massive volumes of propaganda. You have social media all a-buzz and followers on every corner of the earth.

Santa, you are in millions of locations around the world, with an almost franchise like similarity.  Your work has overshadowed all, even those who don’t participate in the festivities and yet the one thing your efforts bear no resemblance to is, well, Christmas.

Do you remember Christmas Santa? Roaring fires with cups of hot mulled wine by a tree cut down from the woods? Children looking out bedroom windows, so much more interested in the magic of your arrival, than in what you actually had for gifts.

Do you remember a Child sent to give us hope, a moment of reflection, with angels and wise men and people singing carols, rather than folks treading on each other to grab the last video game that will definitely ensure that a boy or girl will not remember Christmas Day as they climb into a world of ammunition or car chases with a plate of cold turkey on their lap.

So while I don’t blame you for embracing capitalism and responding so masterfully to each market you serve, I hope you will remember that regardless of your religious beliefs, and whether to you the story is true or an allegory. In any case, Christmas is the story of one event. It was a Silent Night, Santa, not a night of texting, tweeting and liking. It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, not a Midnight-Madness. Two scared kids rode into Bethlehem, without the benefit of a GPs system. It was cold. They had a baby, a Saviour. Shepherds sat on hills and watched their flocks, and the cattle were lowing, and angels sang songs of goodwill toward men. Christmas is about love Santa; about hope and quiet rest, reflective kindness and friendship. It’s about a common dream of peace on earth.

Merry Christmas