1.
he sees you when you’re sleeping
he knows when you’re awake
he knows if you’ve been bad or good

Santa sounds a lot like John Ashcroft’s wet dream. Pardon me if I don’t feel comfortable with the fact I’m being surveilled by a man who’s supposed to bring joy and Christmas cheer to the world, when he’s judging bad and good by his own standards. Who knows how fucked up they might be?

I guess I get a lump of coal for being such a grinch. But there is no mention of whether president Bush gets a lump of coal for causing the deaths of over 15,000 people. Or I guess he doesn’t have to worry about getting coal since he and his buddies now control most of the world’s oil reserves anyway. Sorry, I’m off track . . .

How can there be happy little songs about this guy? Watching us day and night shouldn’t we be writing horror stories instead of Christmas carols?

2.
if you encourage your kids to believe in santa claus, you’re setting them up for a life of believing in anything. like the easter bunny, or the tooth fairy, or that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, or that we can trade liberty for security, or that torture is a responsible method of intelligence gathering, or that capitalism is inherently more fair than socialism, or that painkiller addiction is somehow better than crack addiction.
How many times must we lie to our children before it’s no longer acceptable? How many times must our government lie to us?

3.
when I was a kid, my family would go to some holiday celebration every year for Chinese folks somewhere in the outer suburbs. And every year, a guy dressed as santa claus would burst through the door and give gifts to all the children. and every year it would make me embarrassed because everyone knows santa is NOT Chinese.
What kind of process was at work in my head that I was ashamed of my own people? What made me feel a santa claus “of color” was more fake than a white one. (maaaaaan…they’re all equally fake.)

This year, my girlfriend’s 3-year-old nephew had no interest in the black santa doll in the store, only the white one. I wonder what other preferences he’ll have growing up.

4.
it’s supposed to be a cute little secret that we’re all in on: tell the kids the boxes under the tree are from santa, but they’re really from their parents. And the more presents they get, the better they must have been over the past year, even tho we all know that more presents means richer family.

But that’s part of the fun of keeping the secret , the rich kids get to feel good about themselves, and the kids from working class families…well, they’re parents are forced to either buy presents they can’t afford or to let their children believe that kids who already have everything, have it because they deserve it. And the kids who don’t have nothing are bad anyway.

But it’s just a cute little secret…

5.
when my father was a kid growing up in China, a guy dressed as santa visited the village. As the children gathered around, he regaled them with stories of his travels, to England to talk to Churchill, to America to advise Roosevelt, to Russia to meet with Stalin. And my 9-year-old future dad thought to himself:

“oh man, nobody would lie about that, this guy must be real.”

Santa Claus as international diplomat.

6.
when my girlfriend was a 6-year-old refugee in Utica, santa didn’t visit her house. At school, they told the children that santa would be coming thru the chimney on Christmas eve, but living in the projects, she had no chimney.

So she left the front door unlocked before sleeping and woke to find no presents, because her parents, working 5 jobs between them didn’t know shit about Christmas. But instead, she silently blamed her mother for locking the door.

Imagine being 6, and thinking you missed Christmas again because Santa can’t bother with people who have to lock their doors.

7.
if I was Christian, boooy, I’d be pissed off like a mug. That the birth of my savior is celebrated by pretending a fat white man breaks into people’s apartments and leaves shit there.

Merry Christmas.

copyright Giles Li, 2003