One of the highlights of the Advocate staff’s year is reading through letters to Santa by Aspen View students (see excerpts from the letters in our Christmas Greetings section, starting page 15). There are Salvador Dalí-calibre requests for some pretty surreal items, guileless disclosures about how good or bad each child has been, and proof — if any more were needed — that Apple will one day rule the world as a (hopefully) benevolent, tech-fuelled dictator. Seriously — how is it that every child in the county wants an iPad?
What really stuck out this year, though, were a number of letters that we didn’t run. Some children used their letter to Santa not just to list the toys they want or to promise cookies, but to disclose deeper hopes and even fears.
More than one student told Santa how much they wanted a loved one to spend more time with them or to recover from an illness. Several mentioned a classmate who had lost a family member this year, asking Santa to bring the child something extra special.
We might complain about kids becoming increasingly glued to a screen of some kind and disconnected from their surroundings, but the student letters the Advocate perused this year showed that kids still understand and ache for human connection intrinsically.
We’re often reminded that Christmas is a magical time to spend with family and friends, but what’s abundantly clear is that kids want more than one indulgent morning that’s disconnected from their day-to-day reality — and really, so do we all.
Here’s to a Christmas that’s perhaps not so special, but instead to a year of making connections that matter.
