I wanted to make a kid’s Christmas special — then I read letters to Santa | Opinion

I’m ready to enact some holiday magic, so I pull up the U.S. Postal Service’s Operation Santa website, a repository of letters sent from children around the country to whom they surely thought was Kris Kringle, and not a government agency. To me, this is the best part of the holidays: the chance to make someone’s Christmas miraculous, special, and filled with hope and surprise. I love to give gifts this time of year, though I’ve never happened upon Operation Santa before.

I start reading the first letter, which I assume will be from a child who otherwise will be getting a pair of socks and a warm hug. They’ll ask for something small and unassuming, I’m sure. Something inexpensive and sweet.

Joseph is 12 years old, and he wants a desktop PC, 13,500 V-bucks — a currency used in the online video game Fortnite — and an iPhone 12 mini.

I’m still nursing along my iPhone 8. Sorry, Joseph. Next.

Asher has written to Santa that he appreciates all his hard work, will leave a popsicle in the freezer for him on Christmas night, and says very politely, if it’s not too much trouble, that he would like new tires for his ATV.

These are not the wish lists I expected to find. Sure, the Postal Service just says the goal is to “make a holiday wish come true.” But doesn’t it feel better to fulfill a wish that is otherwise unfulfillable? Some families are asking for help paying their heating bill or buying a coat for their toddler. I get the sense if Asher asked his parents as kindly as he asked Santa, they’d probably spring for those treads. The internet tells me his ATV cost at least $3K.

I filter the list so that it only displays kids from Michigan. That must have been the problem. Parents in Michigan will have undoubtedly recognized that this program is a chance for youngsters who might otherwise not get any gifts under the tree to have a secret Santa play the hero and make their small, available-on-Amazon dreams a reality.

“Dear Santa,” the first one reads. “I live in an apartment with my mom, dad, sister, and brother.” OK, I think, good start. “For Christmas, I would like two iPhones for my friend and I.”

To be specific, Sarem wants the iPhone 13 in white and pink. “I really have trust in you and I hope you do this for me and my friend and help out our family,” the girl wrote.

I’m starting to sweat. This girl has laid down the gauntlet. She’s going to not “trust” Santa anymore if he doesn’t deliver? Is this child’s belief in Santa — in the miracle and the magic — a weight that someone not her parent must now bear in the amount of $1,198? Is this what “helping a family” entails these days?

The next letter is a truly impressive feat of organization. It’s a typed list by Rylee — who signs her name with a heart — inclusive of 40 items ranging from trinkets such as “slime” and “new underwear” to a new laptop, a Polaroid camera, Uggs and a folding gymnastics kip bar.

Xzander wants an Oculus Quest and a blue Nintendo Switch lite. Isaiah wants an iPad and wireless earbuds. Bailey, one of the best kids in the world if you believe her sign-off to Santa, really wants a V.R. system.

Many young letter-writers remind Santa of the expected tit-for-tat Christmas Eve trade-off: there will be cookies waiting for him, they promise. I thought cookies were a thank you. Now I see them for what they are. A bribe.

Wanting crazy things for Christmas isn’t new. Heck, it was all the way back in 1940 that a fictional Ralphie Parker wrote his own letter to Santa explaining his urgent need for a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle. In 1953, Eartha Kitt told Santa, baby to give her the deed to a platinum mine. That’s pretty wild. The kid who demanded a hippopotamus for Christmas in 1985 didn’t want a “dinky tinker toy.” Her ask was creative, if not totally psychotic.

I think what bothers me about the letters is they show me what kids really want today … and it’s not what I want them to want. I want kids to make either humble requests for what they really need, or outlandish demands that show their wacky imaginations — requests that remind me of the best parts of childhood, not the drudgery of our grown-up world. These kids seem to all want the same things — things big tech companies have told them they wanted. Consumer goods that, at least in my mind, don’t have much to do with childhood.

In reading through these letters, I find my own holiday spirit dampening under this flurry of expensive, technologically advanced requests. I had already discussed with my 8-year-old son how we would adopt one of these letters. How I couldn’t spend the money on him and another child but how together we could choose a letter, then a gift. Letting him choose a child and help send them a present would be its own gift; ‘Tis better to give than to receive, they say.

I ask him what he thinks about kids writing to Santa for things like computers and iPads. I try not to look surprised when he answers that it makes him feel fortunate. “Why?” I ask.

Because I already have an iPad I could use. And I could go downstairs right now and watch tv all day. And because I have family, he adds.

I am so heartened. My own child immediately recognizes that having family is the greatest gift of all. Until his words hit me another way, after he’s already left to go see what he can find on Netflix. Maybe he feels fortunate because he doesn’t need Santa at all. He thinks his family is going to get him all that other stuff.

I better tell him to go put a letter to Santa in the mail.

Jennifer Brookland covers child welfare for the Detroit Free Press in partnership with Report for America. Make a tax-deductible contribution to support her work at bit.ly/freepRFA. Reach her at jbrookland@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Gift requests in Operation Santa letters surprised me