LETTER TO SANTA CLAUS
Dear Santa,
I do not know if I am writing to you out of faith, out of desperation, or out of pure anthropological spirit. It is just that for some time now, I have been wondering if you truly exist or if you are merely yet another branded symbol of a world that has lost its sense of wonder along the way. I imagine you there, in your open-plan office at the North Pole, surrounded by elves on fixed-term contracts and a marketing department telling you how many calories a slice of pandoro should contain.
I do not want gifts.
Not anymore. I have had them all, and they have only served to help me understand that every new object becomes old the exact moment you unwrap it. What I truly need — and what perhaps only you could bring, if you have not yet surrendered to e-commerce — is a bit of silence. The real kind, not the algorithmic silence of people who do not reply to messages. I am writing to you from a world that has fallen in love with its own reflections. Everyone wants to be seen, yet no one wants to be truly observed. Authenticity is spoken of as if it were an anti-aging cream, while we exchange likes like postage stamps of an empire that no longer exists. Perhaps that is why I continue to believe in you, my old friend: because you represent the last fairy tale not yet entirely dismantled by a fifteen-second reel. I do not know if you still arrive by sleigh or by private jet, but if by chance you pass through these parts, stay a while. I have no fireplace, but I have a table made of real wood, an open bottle, and a heap of stories to tell. Feel free to bring one of your reindeer, perhaps the one with the red nose, for the darkness here has grown long and we need someone to illuminate it from within.
I am not asking for miracles.
Only to remind us that the greatest gift, at times, is remaining human even when it is not convenient. And if you must bring me something, let me find a bit of courage inside the wrapping paper. The courage to still believe, even if only for one night, that magic has not been entirely auctioned off at the end-of-season sales.
With affection, irony, and a splash of whisky, someone who has never quite stopped waiting for you.
