Published December 25, 2000
Dear Santa . . .
It's been a full fifty years since I first wrote to you. I think. Half a century has a way of blurring memory. But not yours I guess. Some people say you are the eternal child and the forever old man, with a mind that always wonders and never forgets.
I don't recall what I asked for. My class of twelve pre-school kids had been just taught the rudiments of writing and reading. We were then asked, as part of our yearend exercise, to try to put down our Christmas wish list. We were literally a ragtag band of under-fives invited to form the first kindergarten batch of that church by the lake. And since our teacher was fresh from training in the United States, I suppose it was natural for her to wonder if the western tradition of kids writing to you could be transplanted to these Asian shores.
Hindsight says she should perhaps not have wondered. Children are the same everywhere and, then as now, would jump at the chance of getting their wishes fulfilled.
I must have asked for a shiny new top, or one of those low-tech toys popular at that time, and a bag full of chocolates. I'll never know for sure.
These days, I'd say even you have to shake your head at what children list down. The e-world has them asking for play stations, cellular phones or even the latest configuration of personal computers, the latter so that they can e-mail you direct to wherever your current address might be. As to this last matter, don't worry, the kids will find out easily enough. It is likely you're listed somewhere in the Internet. Actually, I imagine that the e-world, which is a convenience for many, is a headache for you.
The pace at which the planet has been transformed by high technology (That's an already obsolete term but it's the only one I can reach for.) that it's been one amazing fast-forward for the likes of me.
Which brings me back to fifty years ago. If back then, at age three, I mailed a list, I have another one this year. I am three years old again this year, that is if what I believe is accepted - that life starts at fifty and not at forty. That would now put me into my second three-year-old childhood.
This time around, however, there is no more of the innocence of true childhood. That will never be reclaimed, not with this earth having gone through all of the wrenching changes. The childlike has been replaced by a good measure of jadedness. But that has not been a total loss. Hope does spring eternal.
This is not a wish list then, but one of hopes. The first of these, of course, is that the crisis that besets our nation comes to an end soon. All this rattling around and getting nowhere is much, too much frustrating, downright depressing actually. What with a President clinging desperately to his seat even as the allegations of his flaws and misdeeds grow perceptively more and more believable as witness after witness testified to their truth. If there is any consolation to be had from the mess, it is in the dubious entertainment value the show provides. But, the whole country can forego that in exchange for putting the state back on even keel, even if that means taking the captain from his post.
Second on the list is... Well, truth is that the rest just follow from the first. It's like, if that foremost of hopes is fulfilled, the whole run of hopes follows that we might somehow manage to steer a more focused course, that the days of gangster-like cronyism will blow away, that the poor and not-so-poor will wake up to the fact that popularity, slogans and posturing do not spell good stewardship, that the rich will truly see their way to beyond their comfortable sinecures, that the young and not-so-young undertake to secure their future in positive deeds that are not merely symbolic, that the real wisdom of our elders be put to honest use, that...
I guess you get the picture. But, while I am sure it is one within the realm of possibility, I can understand if you say it is not among the gifts you normally carry in your sack. In that case, maybe you could help this blighted nation by elevating these hopes to you-know-Who. It's a long shot, to be sure.
Wasn't it He who said that God helps those who help themselves? We've not been doing much of the positive kind of helping ourselves, we must accept. There's just been too much of the opposite type going on.
Ah... So then, perhaps, we can amend the list. Make that first hope, then, that we might see it in ourselves to reclaim that sense of guided self-help as instructed by the Divine. I dare say it was in us at one time and then in fits and starts afterward. I am sure some of it remains. Maybe, with His help, our penitence and some benediction, we might make this first turn of the new millennium and find the winds to fill our sails again and plow onto the right tack.
So, here's to you, dear Santa, in hope and prayer.
P.S. A Merry Christmas to you too.