Dear Santa,

I have never written to you. The one and only time I left a Christmas letter on the window seal was back in Austria when I was only a little girl, and because of our tradition, the note had been addressed to the Christmas Angel and not you.

Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year, and I am not feeling it this year. I haven’t hummed a Christmas tune, haven’t wrapped a present yet, and when I tried to watch a Christmas movie the other day, hoping it would finally bring the familiar magic back into my heart, I only made it for a few minutes -then I turned the TV off.

The Christmas tree is still in the attic, so are all the boxes with decorations. As hard as I try, it seems I cannot overcome this blockage in my mind -and heart. I love Christmas and the Holidays, I adore everything about it. So many wonderful memories, filled with people I love, even though some are no longer with us.

It feels like I went to bed in October and I woke up in December. Christmas has been sneaking up on me for years, but this year it simply over rolled me like an avalanche.

What has happened to my Christmas spirit? Santa, can you help me and bring it back, please?

Without Christmas, what would I be? Another Grinch or perhaps just another Krank, who then last minute could regret her decision to pass on Christmas and go haywire in a last-minute attempt to set it all up the way it needs to be?

The Holidays! The season of Shoulds. I should write a card to the neighbors, I should buy a Poinsettia, we should bake cookies, an endless list of Shoulds, leaving me with guilt if I don’t obey.

I am sad inside and I cannot shake it off.

What a year it has been. It all started in January. Did you watch from afar when the mob stormed the U.S. Capitol? The violence, the hatred so openly on display for the world to see. People were so filled with rage, they were willing to not just attack, but also hurt and ultimately take lives -and they did.

I have lost friends, students, and customers this year, all because we have different opinions. These days, it seems they are not just views and ideas anymore, but they now define us. Now I am who I voted for, and depending on which side is judging, I am either good or bad. I will be laughed at and called names either way -because there is always the other side.

The unity, the togetherness have disappeared. Social media has acted like cancer on this society and now it has metastasized, the disease has spread and it seems incurable at the present time.

Pictures with you Santa, how adorable they can be, and how special they should be. A governor posing with his family, all holding semi-automatic weapons in their hands, asking Santa for ammunition. This was perhaps the worst thing they could have done to me. Why? What an insult it must be to any parent who lost a child in a school shooting? What an affront it is to me, the one who still believes in the good of people.

I feel like I have been clinging on to a dream, a fantasy that in reality will never exist. It was always like that. I just never saw it so clearly.

The spirit of Christmas all over the world, cheering and singing together in harmony, helping neighbors you know would hate your gut if they would only know that I belong to the other side.

For a short time, there will be a truce. Strangers will wish you a Merry Christmas, but what good does it do if we continue the same way just a few days afterward? Thousands of people will discover their conscience for a couple of weeks, and they will donate to the starving children in the Third World or the last unicorn in Namibia.

Millions of beautiful, healthy trees have been cut and soon they will be found in landfills. This planet is dying, yet we hold on to traditions to destroy nature even more. Why?

I want to skip Christmas, can you believe it Santa? Me, the lady who has been working for a Christmas tree just ten years ago.

Why can I not feel the joy of the season like the old lady down the street, who has her decoration up since October, for all to see, blinking and shinning way before Halloween? To be honest, it annoys me and I wonder if I have gotten old and I am now so set in my ways that I have a hard time with changes?

When I grew up Christmas was ‘the time of the year’ now it is almost spread over three months, which takes the ‘special’ out of the special time -at least for me. Am I hallmarked out with too much spirit?

To this day, I wish Christmas would feel again like it did in my childhood when I got up at six o’clock in the morning during the Advent season to plunder my Christmas calendars (yes, plural). I remember exactly how I had to stay in my room on Christmas Eve until the gifts were under the tree and the Christmas Angel rang the bell, and how I munched potato salad with sausages with my grandma after the presents had been unwrapped.

It seems every year I try to chase this feeling for the perfect Christmas.

Now so many years later, I am old enough to know, many people are not fortunate enough to spend this special time of the year the way the TV commercials make us believe we should. The desire to spend a Christmas like this is not present in everybody. Some need to work. Others are lonely, or perhaps they are sad or grieving. Maybe they don’t celebrate for religious reasons, too many won’t have the money. Life has gotten very expensive this year, so many have lost their jobs and homes. People feel isolated in fear of a pandemic that is still not under control because we cannot even unite when our lives depend on it.

I think it is simply not possible for everyone to pretend that everything is fine and I am one of them. What’s going on around me in this country, and in this world is not fine. But has it ever been?

I see the homeless in tents, the migrants on the border freezing, hoping for a better life that we will deny them to get. I see cruelty everywhere, I see lies and falsehood spreading like a bushfire.

Oh, Santa, what shall I do? I have six more days to find the spirit.

There are gluten-free cookies in the cupboard, almond milk in the fridge. (Sorry, I cannot leave it on the table. We have dogs who believe in the magic of human food.)

Merry Christmas, be safe!

Bridget (The little girl who got older)