Vicinity of North Pole
Christmas, 2012
Dear Humanity,
I know you’re supposed to be the ones writing the letters to
me. But this is important. Let me start by explaining a couple of things:
People wonder how we manage to deliver to everyone on a
single night. Think about it - the post office does that every day, and we
only have to do that once a year. What most people don’t know is we move the
workshop every year with Sno-Cats® as the ice drifts across the North Pole. When you’re doing distribution by air you can’t
beat the central location in middle of the northern hemisphere.
It’s a good thing we’re almost never at the actual
geographic North Pole, with those submarines coming up from under the ice, and
explorers showing up all the time now. Elves consider humans to be walking
germ-bags – they’re the last surviving population of Homo floresiensis, and one flu germ could wipe them out. I
may be the physical manifestation of the spirit of Christmas, but my physiology
is human. I have to get so many shots before I go out, and even then, I have to
go into quarantine for two weeks afterward. It’s okay - I need the rest.
But what I really need to talk about is Carbon Dioxide. I
need to talk about the oceans turning to acid, and the ice melting. There’s
going to be some kind of ice at the North Pole for a long time – at least most
of the time. It won’t be all of a sudden that the ice will melt off and the North
Pole will be open water, but what we’re seeing is the ice getting thinner and
breaking up more and more each year. Nowadays we keep the workshop and all the
employee housing on pontoons because we really are out in the ocean, the ice
can open up at any time and swallow you up. You can tell the ice is getting thinner;
we really need multi-year ice to put down the four-foot anchors for our buildings. We really notice when we get on some of this goofy
first-year ice that’ll break at the first little wave, and we see that more and
more.
The summer of 2007 was really something else – we had a
crack in the ice sheet a mile wide go across the pole and through the middle of
our operation, and about a third of our buildings including the stables wound
up on the other side. Our operations have been slowed down a bit ever since,
and you know how important we are to the economy! That was rough, but nothing
compared to last summer, 2012, I couldn’t believe the ice reports – so much
melted off that it started changing the weather and we got hit with an arctic
cyclone. Employee housing took a really big hit, some of the bolts came out of the
ice and the buildings went over with the elves inside. Luckily, no one was
really hurt, but the cyclone broke up the ice even more, and we lost about half
the ice cap. Half!
We’re a big operation in a harsh place. Ain’t no holiday up
here. The ice has gotten so unstable, we’ve been contracting with the Russians
to bring up one of these big bergs that’s breaking off of Greenland, they call
them ice islands. They’ll tow it with icebreakers and submarines. The problem
is how are we going to keep it from drifting? No one has ever anchored a
billion-ton object, especially not elves. But if we can manage it, I’ll make it
a refuge for the rest of the walruses and polar bears. BP has let us know if we
lease the North Pole for drilling, they’ll let us set the workshop up on one of
their platforms, but I don’t think the Russians would like that. Maybe that’s
why they’re so willing to help.
A melting arctic affects your weather as well. It breaks my
heart when I get down there, and the chimney is all that’s left of the house,
and I have to track down the kids in a hurricane shelter. I live forever, and
if you guys don’t get your act together I’m going to have to watch your
beautiful cities fall beneath the seas. It might turn out that Atlantis was not
a legend of your past but a warning of the future you face.
You’ve been bad, but I am not going to give you any coal – I
have to reduce my own carbon footprint. I’m a spirit of giving, and I don’t
have a choice but to bring you all the stuff you’re asking for. It’s bitterly
ironic, being a saint that magically brings presents, now threatened by the
very excess of that giving. My back is hurting from carrying all this stuff,
and you guys are hurting too, with your houses and garages and storage units
packed full of stuff you don’t need and never will be able to use.
So I have to think, what if Santa stopped coming? No more
gifts as you face ruin in the whirlwind before Sandy’s claws. What if you face
ruin to measure your wastefulness, and eight reindeer forsake you for four horsemen? Because I can’t just give, and give, and give – I have come to represent the
myth of endless growth that without fail will lead to ruin. People, I
can’t do it for you. You have to put Santa on a diet.
The giving of a gift
lasts just a moment, but the object itself is made out of matter. Mater, that’s
the Latin word for mother, and all you have temporarily in your ownership is a
little bit of Mother Earth. They come from her body, the temples of her
forests, the dirt and stones that make her flesh. To her they, and you, will
return. An object is touched by many hands - the hands that make it, your hands
that keep it and care for it, and the hands that take it when you are done with
it, and it embodies the time and life energy of all these people. So if it is
an object you give, make sure it will serve well, serve for a long time. Become
a culture of few things, beautiful things, useful things to pass to the next
generation. Such objects are expensive, and worth it.
Why do we give? A gift is a celebration of our love,
something people can remember and think fondly on our relationship, our shared
experience. We can de-materialize Christmas without reducing the love by one
bit. That’s why I like the Internet. I can let the elves telecommute from home
and write apps that you can give. A book today will not require a tree to be
cut down. A photograph will not require chemicals to develop. It sure cuts down
the work if I only have to drive a virtual sleigh.
Give a subscription to solar power. Give recycled. Give a
hand-me-down with a story attached. Give good, healthy food and drink that can
be enjoyed with love – especially if you grew or prepared it yourself. Best of
all, give of your heart, a poem or story or piece of art, the gift of your
singing voice. Give them a massage, a coupon for double digging the garden in
the spring, or the right to borrow a favorite thing whenever they like. Give
your love.
And folks, we’ve got to shoulder into the hard work ahead,
and give our most precious gift of all – our time. When you take just the time
to stop and think of what you really need, you are saving not just Santa Claus but
your own dear children. Celebrate each hour you volunteer shoveling the muck from Sandy, each solar panel you
put up, every object you borrow or lend to your neighbors. I’ll be a happy,
skinny Santa with a smaller sack of gifts, twice the twinkle in my eye, and
maybe, just maybe, enough ice to land my reindeer.
Sincerely,
Santa Claus
