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What do Flyer readers want for Christmas?

Every year, I look forward to one of the best parts of the newspaper during the holiday season; kids’ letters to Santa.

Sometimes awkward, sometimes hilarious, and sometimes absolutely heartbreaking, letters to Santa are always quality reading material. Unless you are the parent of the child that asks Santa “for a new boyfriend for my mom because her boyfriend is mean to her” or for “my dad to stop drinking.” If you’re that parent, well, maybe letters to Santa aren’t exactly your favorite thing in the world. But at least you know how your kid really feels, right?

I read every one of those things when they are published, and I don’ even have any kids.

I read for the kid who asks Santa for every single gaming console on the market, including every game ever made to go along with it, plus a go-cart, and a fort, and night-vision goggles and a 1967 Firebird, red please.

I read for the kid who asks for an end to homelessness or world hunger, or for presents for other kids, or for the troops to come home from Iraq.

Then there’s the kid who is a realist that asks for one action figure, or Barbie, or whatever. I read for that kid too.

Some of the funniest letters to Santa are the ones written by the kids that confuse Santa Claus with God. It must be really tough for a kid to be able to differentiate the two. Two omnipotent beings that you write to, or can talk to in your head, that you ask for things and they just magically happen. Some kids think Christmas is a celebration of Santa Claus’ birthday. Others write their letters to Jesus.

“Please Jesus, please bring me the new party time Barbi dream house,” or “Please Santa, I’ve been really good, please bring me a Nintendo Wii and thank you Santa Claus for dying on the cross for our sins.”

Letters to Santa are awesome. They represent one of the most incredible qualities in human nature that we are apparently born with but that eventually gets beaten out of all of us: the ability to believe that anything is possible, that is, if you just ask Santa Claus.

Anyway, it seems like a shame that we eventually grow out of writing these beautiful, innocent, and hopeful letters to Santa, and that we eventually lose faith in asking someone in a letter for the one thing that we want more than anything in the world, and that we at least for the span of a few months, hope against all hope that somehow our wish will be granted.

So I say we forget all our inhibitions, and our old selves, and old bodies for a moment, and the weak economy and our own beaten down, down-trodden realism and ask old Santa for the one thing we want the most this year. Maybe Santa or at the very least Mark Cuban, or Bill Gates, or Don Tyson or someone is out there listening, and will make our Christmas miracle come true.

So tell us, dear Flyer readers. What do you want for Christmas?

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