When my brother and sister sent me my niblings’ Christmas lists this year – instruction manuals to keep this out-of-state, out-of-touch aunt on a four- and 11-year-old’s nice list – I read them with conflicting warmth and consumerist guilt. It doesn’t seem like all that long ago that I produced a wish list that was probably strikingly similar: toys designed to set adults’ teeth on edge, video games, bits of plastic that I would have adored for an hour then sent to rot in landfill for the next 5000 years. I’m no Grinch, though (at least not to a four-year-old’s face), so I dutifully loaded up my cart, covered my eyes before I saw the total cost, and hit “purchase”.
Because I’m the youngest and most scattered sibling, my family indulges me more than I probably deserve. Soon it was time to send back a wish list for my own dependent: my Samoyed, Heidi. But when I sat down to write it for her – no thumbs, see? – she proved a little trickier to shop for. Given her way, Heidi would request from Santa an endless sunny afternoon at the park, the undivided attention of her girlfriend, a golden retriever named Harriet, and a rotisserie chicken.
Credit: Robin Cowcher
And then I thought about my own wish list. I find receiving gifts extremely uncomfortable, and I’m not easy to shop for. I have a little disposable income and very little impulse control, so I’m quick to buy myself any and everything that strikes my fancy. When I dig deep and get introspective, it turns out that all the things I really, really want, no elf can make in a workshop.
I would love six months off. I’d like the time and peace to get my life together, paint my bathroom, match Tupperware containers to their lids, develop a Pilates habit, work off my sleep debt, fix all the relationships I’ve let fizzle in this last manic year, and finally, finally finish my third book. I want another season of Mindhunter and Santa Clarita Diet and Kaos (seriously, does Netflix have something against me, specifically? Why can’t I have anything nice?). Make me the supreme leader of all television for a week. Cancel all upcoming superhero movies, live-action remakes and film adaptations of TV shows. Cast Jonathan Bailey in everything.
Could whichever colleague picked my name for Secret Santa find a way to erase the super cut of embarrassing moments from my memory, so I could go one single day without reliving the time I vomited in a lavender bush on an otherwise promising first date? Would that fall under my office’s $15 limit?
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On Christmas morning, I’d like to be handed a red envelope containing a letter from my doctor. Merry Christmas! Your sister has gifted you a light coma scheduled for January 19, 2025 through to January 21, 2029, sparing you the next four years of abject chaos, inhumanity and sensationalist headlines.
Put me down for a short-release drug that alleviates my existential dread, but isn’t already a class-A substance. I don’t necessarily want a cure for the dread – you need a little to keep you funny – but I’d welcome a few hours of reprieve.
All I want for Christmas is to feel like we’re headed towards a better place. I’d like my vote to matter, and the ability to effect real change. I’d like to live somewhere where people take care of each other, where capitalism is no longer king and people don’t have to exhaust themselves running an unwinnable race just to survive. I want a ceasefire. I want to go back to when we all agreed that Nazism should stay dead. I want us to stop making idols out of billionaire idiots. I want people to stop voting against our own interests. I want someone to do something to fix – really fix – the mess of a system we’re all trapped in.
