(having set steel trap for Santa). . . Then I’ll hurry downstairs and free him, and we’ll soon see if a body may see him. (John Brownjohn, 1877)
Yesterday I read a news piece affirming a mall Santa for supporting a three year old girl for not wanting to sit in his lap, telling her that indeed she had every right to choose — yay, Mall-Santa. It made me go off on one of my flights of fancy (what an interesting phrase, a flight of fancy. A soaring of the imagination . . .) about what the REAL Santa might have to say were he to deliver a talk at the local corner cafe.
Which means of course, that I need to channel my own inner Santa, right?? And my own inner Santa turns out to be kinda a cynical old dude, sorta like Bill Maher, who dared to refer to Santa as an “entitled old white dude” and an A******. (Gasp.) But that description wars with my love of “up on the housetop reindeer paws,” and “a right jolly old elf,” who makes me laugh when I see him in spite of myself.
So my inner Santa is a schizty character, determined to do good, but having a pretty good idea that the notion of “no good deed going unpunished” has some truth to it. So, his lecture to those of us scarfing down latte and scones at the local coffee shack?
”Hang in there, folks. The Doomsday Clock might be set at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest to global catastrophe we’ve ever been, but it’s not too late to build a better world, one milli-second at a time. Choose. Conspiracy theories and a world view where there are boogers behind every bush might have some truth to ‘em, but they don’t make you happier, and more capable of random acts of kindness. Choose. In this second, you have the greatest gift of all. Your capacity to choose.”
You go, Santa!
