‘Dear Santa’ it begins, since my son is still not quite so English that we haven’t managed to keep the preposterous concept of ‘Father Christmas’ away from his blameless mouth. ‘I hope You ARE WELL’ it continues, sounding a charming note of concern that shows him to be a man of impeccable manners.
Every family that wishes to communicate with St Nicholas has their own tradition for so doing. I knew kids who sent their Christmas letters up the chimney in a puff of smoke. Thence, through a chain of communication too complex for us here to describe, it would find its way to the North Pole and be re-atomised, cinder by cinder, by Santa’s elves.
Our friend, Mary, actually has Santa’s phone number and makes her son, Bill, very aware that any naughty things he does will be passed on to the Big Man directly. I don’t want to say that this has been an effective bulwark against naughtiness, but I will say that ever since he heard this from Bill, our son has been suspiciously pleasant in Mary’s company.
More recently, I’ve heard of kids who eschew a written letter entirely, preferring to send emails or WhatsApp videos for Santa instead. For some reason I can’t quite place, this strikes me as blasphemous. So, when it came to his most important correspondence of the year, I thrust a pen into my son’s hand to do it the old-fashioned way.
I tell him it’s customary to stress he’s been a good boy this year, so Santa can crosscheck this with his files. He takes this literally, opting for the six-word statement ‘I was Being a good BoY’ before barrelling straight on to the task at hand: ‘FoR Christmas I would LikE a Minecraft Lego pumpkin FaRm Set AnD AN Axolotl House.’
Some light Googling revealed these to be suspiciously perfect wordings of Minecraft Lego products that he must have had his eye on.
Since we will be in Ireland over Christmas, his nana had sent him a catalogue from a local toy chain. It’s the sort of holy document that would have filled my five-year-old self with awe. Correction: it very much still does. Despite not recognising most of the things being sold, within 10 seconds of picking it up I am transfixed, ogling the action figures that thrill me as much as they did when I was his age.
By the time I force myself to stop, I am thrumming with avarice, convinced that I – a 38-year-old father of two – should personally own 70% of the products therein. My son, however, is unimpressed.
As a blasphemous citizen of the modern world, he gets all his toy ideas from YouTube videos, so handling a printed collection of toys fills him with less wonder than it does me. Perhaps sensing my disappointment, he picks up the catalogue and pretends to find its contents as dazzling as I do.
‘Call Bill’s mummy,’ he says, ‘and get her to tell Santa that I’ve been a good boy.’
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O’Reilly is out now (Little, Brown, £16.99). Buy a copy from guardianbookshop at £14.78
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