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An early start on a Christmas wish list

Dear Santa: Forgive me if my letter seems particularly early this year. When I saw Second Cup’s ads in the newspapers encouraging people to order their holiday gift baskets I thought I’d waited too long.

Dear Santa:

Forgive me if my letter seems particularly early this year. When I saw Second Cup’s ads in the newspapers encouraging people to order their holiday gift baskets I thought I’d waited too long. Then I realized it was only Labour Day. Whatever happened to waiting until summer was at least over before cranking up the greed machine? How can you think Christmas while you’re salving the last sunburn of the year? Oh well, maybe this little display of untimely avarice will move them closer to Starbucks as the coffee people love to hate.

More pragmatically though, I wanted to write early because I figured if you’ve been keeping tabs on all the weirdness going on you’ll be getting an early start yourself. I’m not sure you can do it all in one night this year Ol’ Boy. It may take the better part of December just to clear security and customs when you fly into the USofA. And don’t even think of including toy guns in this year’s bag. Ditto razor blades though why anyone would want razor blades for Christmas is beyond me. They’re so Hallowe’en.

If my list seems long this year forgive me. Considering how little of it you can actually deliver I’m sure it won’t place any undue burden on you and the elves.

Might as well start off with the biggie. For most of my life I’ve considered you to be the raison d’être of the holiday. Don’t blush Nick, you know it’s true. So what I’d really like this year is once and for all to take Christ out of Christmas. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to pick on Christ or even Christianity; I’m an equal opportunity agnostic. But with so much evil being wrongly done – and let’s not even get into historical atrocities – in His name, be it God, new testament or old, or Allah, or Vishnu or whatever, the world would be a demonstrably better place if we left whomever we believe in to our hearts, not our politics. Think of it as a small, unilateral step towards peace.

Now I’m sure the most reverend Jerry Falwell and his sidekick Pat Robertson will vehemently object to this but hey, I haven’t forgotten them. Please tuck half a brain in your bag for them to share. It’s a whole lot more than either of them seem to have. They think what happened last week in New York was God’s way of punishing the USofA for becoming a secular, homo-toleratin’, feminist bra-burnin’, civil liberties kind of place instead of the intolerant, fundamentalist Christian dogma one they’d prefer. And please bring all the people who think they’re right one of those high-powered Petzl headlamps. It just has to be really hard for them to see much with their heads so far up their butts.

For George W. Bush, his Chiefs of Staff, his cabinet and the Intelligence Community – no wisecracks, they might be listening – a large dose of sober second thought. Please let them think long and hard about sending flesh and blood troops into what will surely be a meatgrinder: Afghanistan. The mujahedeen have been at war for longer than most of America’s troops have been alive. They know no other reality. It is their way of life and all the bravado in the world won’t make a dent in their inhospitable, mountainous hideaway. And please, no talk of nuclear weapons as an alternative. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life ashamed that my country will go down in history as the most heinous mass murderer the world has ever known.

Breast plates and thinking caps for my birth countrymen, please Nick. Somebody’s gonna collapse a lung with all the chest thumpin’ going on, not that chest thumpin’s a bad thing in a feelgood, symbolic kind of way. But I’m sure if they put the thinking caps on and, well, think about it for a while, they’ll realize the multitude of battles fought for the last 225 years to define civil liberties under the US Constitution have been way too important to give up in a moment of scary insecurity. Don’t trade our freedoms for the warm protective arms of even a benevolent government; they’re the reasons most of the rest of the world want to get inside our borders to begin with. Only the truly crass think it’s just because they want to shop at the Gap.

For my adopted countrymen, resolve and backbone. Canada, being more a haphazard collection of good intentions than it is a country, will need both if it is to continue to set its own course in the world. Canadians have long defined themselves in terms of how they differ from their neighbour to the south. Now is not the time to roll over and play dead and let Washington unduly influence who you are. Sure, a couple of terrorists may have slipped into North America through Canada. But all of them eventually slipped through US Customs and Immigration and, so it seems, most of them came in on student visas to learn how to fly planes. Don’t be bullied into something you’ll eventually regret.

To the harried boys and girls who comprise airport security, meaningful reforms. It is highly unlikely anyone’s going to hijack a plane with a handful of Gillette Mach III razor cartridges. Nor is anyone brandishing a memo recorder going to engender as much fear as humour among the flight crew. Yes it was traumatic but let’s get real.

Hearts and minds please for the terrorists of the world. They obviously have neither. I don’t know what combination of grinding poverty, religious brainwashing, charismatic leadership and hopelessness goes into making a terrorist but the sooner we begin to figure it out, the sooner we might begin to figure out how to put an end to it because we sure as hell aren’t going to round ’em all up and march ’em all to the ovens.

Last but not least, Santa, peace in the Middle East. I know, I know. Never has been; probably never will be. I wouldn’t even know where to start but some kind of Palestinian homeland might help. I’d still be pissed if someone took mine away in an act of contrition for having let a madman slaughter millions of people just because they chose to follow a Jewish God.

Fifty years into the drama it’s probably too late to establish a new Jewish state but I’d be willing to pony up Florida for the cause. Similar climate; better neighbours.

Best get to work Santa. It’s going to be a tough year to stay jolly.

Sincerely,

Max