Dear Santa

Love, Jean

Dear Santa,

Outside my window the sun is a blurry pale disk in a snowy sky. Along with the sounds of plows at 5:30 am, that confirms we’re in December, approaching solstice. You don’t mind if I send solstice wishes, do you?

In these past several months I’ve sometimes felt as if a steamroller is headed toward me. I’m in a crowd of people, good people, but we watch in amazement as that orange-topped steamroller bumps its way over laws and government employees, immigrants and diversity guidelines, climate change science and decency. It’s relentless. Possibly you’ve been watching the Far Northern News and might feel the same.

The Christmas Tomte and Goat painted by Jenny Nystrom (1854-1946)

If you could arrange for me to wake up from this dystopian dream, I’d be grateful. If that’s impossible, please let me step out of the steamroller’s path and envision what I DO want.

• I’d like ICE to stop targeting brown-skinned people. We all deserve more decency, more adherence to the law, and more respect.

• I want the return of science. Our country needs healthy citizens, plans to combat climate change, and resources when the next pandemic hits. National parks and museums should be acknowledging actual history, not the redacted version. And how about the melting of permafrost?

• I want free speech. Journalists should be able to ask pertinent questions without getting insulted or threatened. Citizens should be able to speak their minds without having their phones checked when they go through customs. Teachers and professors ought to be able to use challenging books and articles. Let’s go back to the point where we agree on facts and then discuss differing responses.

• I want the focus on “We the People.” This country has never quite succeeded in including everyone in the “We” but it’s an honorable goal. We all deserve affordable health care, the right to marry, and protection against discrimination, for instance. Let’s restore the progress we’d made and work forward from there.

Meanwhile, let’s walk back the disproportionate privileges of the wealthiest among us. Any holiday packages for Bezos and Zuckerberg could accidentally fall out of the sleigh and land near an encampment of the homeless. Just sayin’.

• I want three functioning branches of government. Judges should not be bending the knee to an outsized presidency, and legislators should be consulting reliable materials and testimony from their constituents, not some capitalized tweet.

• I want the flourishing of the arts. We operate best when inventions are made, creativity is applied, beauty is protected, and imagination is encouraged. We’ll need the arts to rebuild what we’re currently losing and improve on it. Then we’ll need satire to keep us on track and make us laugh.

After all, doesn’t “Santa” come from a cross-pollination of a saint, some folklore, a cartoon, and a poem?

I don’t know how you’ll fit any of this in a peddler’s sack, but I have hope.

Jean

P. S. I expect you’ll be getting lots of these wishes from others. Also, I already ate the cookies—sorry.