Dear Santa
It is that time of year. When we all write you letters telling you what we want to find under the Christmas tree. Crafted in our finest handwriting and our smartest prose, we detail all those things that will make us happy. All those things that will magically make our lives a better place if we were just to have them. I say better but that is open to debate. I am not so sure how a bunch of useless tat is going to make my life any better.
Which I suppose is the reason I am writing to you.
Mr Claus, I want a junk-free Christmas. I don’t want no shit. I don’t want no tat under the tree. You know the stuff I’m talking about. Those gifts that have no apparent function beyond being a gift. Wind-up hopping penises, ironic action figures, coffee mugs with dumb slogans and aprons printed with the statue of David. The mindless junk that we give to each other out of obligation rather than love. Presents that when you unwrap them scream out: I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU, I JUST GOT IT BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT YOU DO AT CHRISTMAS!!
Well, Mr Claus, I don’t want any of it. I don’t care to be responsible for any more junk on this planet. I don’t want to be the reason massive machines are churning out line after line after line of plastic crap. The reason blackened smoke stacks billow soot and fumes in the atmosphere. I don’t want to be the reason that the climate is shot. The reason the rivers in China are polluted to fuck. I don’t want to be the reason the polar bears don’t have a home. I don’t want to be the reason the kids are getting arrested in Copenhagen. I don’t want to be that guy. The useless douchebag who has everything but a soul. I don’t want to have my home filled with novelties and trinkets. Frivolous oddities that have no purpose beyond being odd. I don’t want any dumbass shit that came from some site called needapresent.com. I don’t need or want any more Japanese toys for kidults, boob-shaped salt cellars or nifty fold-out rulers that tell me the history of the industrial revolution. I know the history of the industrial revolution. We invented a bunch of machines to improve our world and ended up using them to destroy it instead.
It would be fine if there just were a few of us on this big old planet. But there ain’t. There are billions of us, all writing letters, all wanting more and more stuff. And that’s exactly what it is — STUFF. Nondescript rubbish to fill holes like landfills and the bellies of pelicans, whales and whatever other hole that needs stuffing. Well, I say: Get stuffed! If you do come round this year give my chimney a miss, strike me from the list, I don’t want any more junk. But if you do need to give me something, if somehow it is against regulations not to do it, I’ll take a pair of socks. That’s what we used to give each other when we couldn’t think of anything else. Because socks are useful. We’d say to ourselves, I’m bang out of ideas so I’ll get him some he can use — socks. But not today. Now we think, I have no idea what he needs so I get him something he doesn’t need. Something utterly useless. Then he’ll know I really care. Well, sod you and your trendy Swedish knitted chimp. I need it as much as a chimp needs us cutting down his rainforest to fuel the machine that made that god-awful monkey.
Hope you’re well. Love to the elves and the reindeer.
Your humble friend
David
Ps. Stay off the mince pies, you’re getting fat. Just saying.
Dear Santa,
What David said.
Regards, Simone
AMEN!
Ski socks for us this Christmas then?
Well said!!.
Bubble Bath gift sents, its like saying I hate you with a lavender scent.
Gift voucher/card for David.
You can buy yoursels socks.
Hear hear! Please also write to Ronald McDonald and KFC’s whatever and ask them to stop giving away useless kiddy plastic toys all over the world. Ask shops like Cardies to shut down – nothing they sell is useful. I too am so sick of stuff everywhere. The solution to our world’s problems is not recycling; rather, STOP BUYING. Please just stop!
You just broke a strict taboo. You suggested we use less – Consume less. You are so right. But you will be punished by Wall Street.
Classic article!
Cancel the whole damn thing and retire the fat knob and his furry fleet and his red gimp-suit that Coca Cola invented to sell us more shit in the first place! Have a braai and prevent the annual Turkey genocide because we all want to cling to some dumb, religiously enforced, commercailly hijacked bullshit instead of just having a cool time. Have a cool time. Its cool.
David, have you been really, really good? Else Santa brings you nothing anyway.
I heard today (SAFM) that a new earth has been discovered; three to four times the size of ours. It has plenty of water, too. They didn’t name the solar system, though; they obviously don’t want a rush to get there.
Just think, a whole ‘nother earth to mess up. Gift from God or gift from Santa, do you think?
The question is, who gets to go?
Obviously the rich kids can buy their way there.
Then they’ll need lots of gardeners, servants and helpers, plus endless businesses selling services and products.
I don’t suppose any one would do anything charitable like giving the whole place to populations that already have no food and water here. A pity.
But just think, if I am one of the leftovers, I could pick anywhere on (this) earth I want to live and probably be able to afford the fare. (I’m not much of a traveller, these days.)
I want a fancy car, just like the rest of the ANC…pretty please Santaman…otherwise what David said!
I once read an article in The Economist detailing research into the difference between what people paid for gifts, and the value ascribed to them by those who received them. The difference was in the billions of dollars.
Hear Hear. Been saying this for years.