Thursday, December 24, 2020, 6:04 a.m.

From: bonnie@bonniedonily.com

To: santa@northpole.ca

Santa!

I really meant to get this message off to you sooner, but since Canada Post is up to their earballs with round-the-clock deliveries in this package-laden-pandemic-pandemonium, I thought I’d shoot you an email instead. Feel feel to wait until Boxing Day to open it. I know you must be busy right now.

Or are you? I mean, Covid has really changed the definition of “busy” for a lot of people. Things certainly don’t look anywhere near the same as they did when I wrote you last year. Well, my tree is up and the presents are wrapped and the perogies are tucked into the freezer with care in hopes that my children soon will be here. But, riddle me this Santa? When exactly is that going to be? When will we be all together, under one roof, free to hug with abandon, again?

As much as Amazon and Etsy are getting all the love this year, I think a lot of us aren’t really wishing for material things as much as we are wishing that our loved ones would materialize in front of us. How crazy that we took that in stride last year, the gift of presence. If Covid has gifted me anything, it’s the realization that I actually like people and I wouldn’t mind hanging around them more, without the worry they they are contagious. It’s just too dystopian for me, all the masks and the not-touching and the Zooming.

I don’t want to mix you up with God, asking you for things that I know it’s more in His Department for me to ask for – namely for the end to this pandemic and for things to be “normal” again by next Christmas. And far be it from me to threaten your job security – there certainly is enough of that going around – but I don’t think I need much right now.

BUT, just in case, I will let you know that I still haven’t stopped thinking about that set of toy pots and pans with the happy faces on them that I wished for so badly when I was a 6-year-old paging through the Sears catalog. I’m thinking you must have had shares in that company – at least the Christmas catalog part? Glad you’re still around even if Sears isn’t.

Merry Christmas, Santa. Make sure you have lots of hand sanitizer and extra masks with you as you make your rounds tonight. And above all, stay safe. We want to see you again next Christmas.

XO (the only kind that are ok right now),

Bonnie