text: Dear Santa, This is not how I expected to start my first letter to you as an adult. I had fully anticipated sitting down with my future pre-literate child and dictating out their wishes to some mysterious bearded stranger that actually turned out to be the USPS postmaster, or maybe just that weird town in Indiana. Instead, here I am, not just childless but quite single, effectively praying to a Yuletide deity that I don’t believe in to deliver me out of this Lifetime movie hell. And I mean that in the most literal sense. It genuinely feels like the last month came straight out of one of a dozen movie scripts. There I was, hanging garland and lights and ornaments in my shop when some scary Vanessa Hudgens-looking businesswoman walks in with an ominously large stack of papers and says that her company wants to buy the store and that they know I’m not earning enough to stay in business. Which is... true, but the world doesn’t need to know that. I mean, sure, it’s my fault for trying to open a haberdashery into the teeth of the online shopping boom, and sure, every single lender and businessman I spoke to asked why people wouldn’t just go to Amazon... but did it really have to be Amazon buying out my shop? I don’t know. Maybe I should just try to seduce her. Except she also seems to already be happily married. Maybe this isn’t a Lifetime movie after all. Anyway, here we go. What I want for Christmas is a Lego train. Also a couple hundred thousand dollars so I don’t go out of business. But I’ll settle for the train. Sincerely, James *** Dear Ms. Jónsdóttir First of all, I sincerely apologize for being so offensive with the previous letter. I was having an awful day and halfway through addressing my letter, gave up on remembering the term “North Pole” and instead settled for Ice Land. It was never my intention to contact the office of the Prime Minister of Iceland and beg for money and Legos. With that in mind, I would also like to thank you for your gift of Legos and licorice tea. Amazingly, both were absolutely instrumental in the temporary recovery of my shop. I placed the train set in my front window and multiple parents came in and purchased something simply because their children wanted a closer look at it. I also had three other customers make purchases because I just looked so lonely at the register drinking my tea with a slice of dry pumpernickel (apparently I had a pretty sour look on my face, despite adding more than one sugar cube to the tea). Although I confess that my shop is not yet out of dire straits, I am nevertheless incredibly grateful for your correspondence, both for the unintended benefit and for the kindness of your words. As a demonstration of my gratitude, this letter should have been securely taped to a clumsily wrapped package for you. Please accept my sincerest gift of two fine leather wallets and a banana-themed necktie set that has been selling particularly well. I realize these are not particularly good gifts, but it is my hope that they will be sufficient to entice you to continue our correspondence. Thank you, and happy holidays! James *** Dear Anna, When we first met, I owned a store. I thought that store was my whole life. And when that store started to close, I couldn’t breathe. I thought my dream was done. So I wrote some dumb letter and nearly threw it away ten times before I finally put it in the mail. And miracle of miracles, it somehow arrived at your desk, and you saved me. Now I know we technically only exchanged three or four real letters before switching to email, then texts and phone calls, then all-too-short and wildly expensive visits until I wised up and moved myself and my store out here, but I thought that a return to form might be appropriate for this, our two-year meetaversery. So here I am, painstakingly handwriting these words two days before you read them while you’re asleep about ten feet away. When we first met, that store was my life. Now, you are.