12/25/18

My dear Friend and President, DJT,

 Merry Christmas! This will be a very short letter as my 21-year-old daughter is eager to get to the presents under the tree. She did a lovely job of taking some cedar branches and making them into a sort of mobile. It's lovely and we did not have to kill a tree. A win-win!

I understand that you participated in the NORAD Santa Tracker phone bank again this year. It's all over the news that you asked a 7-year old if she still believed in Santa. She must have expressed some doubt which led to the "Because at seven it's marginal, right?" comment that everyone is talking about. Most of the papers are framing that as another indicator of your insensitivity, but I suspect you were just affirming whatever it was she said to you.

Personally, I am not a fan of deceiving children about Santa. It plays on their innocence and once they realize they've been duped, they might begin to doubt other things that we are telling them. The Santa myth is the start of "fake news." We told our daughter that Santa was a spirit of generosity that we all had. We'd label gifts as coming from "Santa Mommy" or "Santa Grandma" and never pretended that a guy broke into our house to leave presents. We never had to lie to her and she still enjoyed the pleasure of opening gifts. How did you handle the idea of Santa with your kids?

I hope you were joking when you said you were lonely. If you do feel sad, please give me a call and I promise to listen to your woes.

Love to your family,