Dear Santa Claus . . . Love, Ireland

We asked people to write to Santa Claus from Ireland to ask for whatever they wanted. We’ve been very good all year, after all

Dil Wickremasinghe

Broadcaster, activist, comedian

Dear Santa – I am writing to you as a new Irish citizen to ask you for two gifts for the people of Ireland.

The first is the gift of self-worth. Since I moved to Ireland, I noticed that the Irish do not like compliments in any shape or form.

Initially, I found the continuous self-deprecation rather endearing: “What? This old thing? Ah, sure, it only cost a tenner!”

Then I came across the don’t-get-above-your-station mentality, which has debilitated some to the point that they wouldn’t even consider reaching for a better job or quality of life.

So I have come to the conclusion that, deep down, the Irish people don’t believe in themselves. This came to me earlier in the year, when I received my Irish citizenship.

It is the single most important event of my life, one that has given me huge pride and finally a sense of belonging. However, most Irish people have been sceptical, as I have often been asked “But Dil, why would you want to be Irish?”.

So, Santa, please help my wonderful fellow Irish people gain a sense of self-worth by slipping a few therapy or counselling vouchers under the tree.

The second gift I’d love for Ireland is equality.

Although Ireland has come far, we still need to keep pushing for equality for all residents of Ireland: the LGBT community, Travellers, people with disabilities, migrants, women, older and younger citizens, single parents, unmarried fathers, children and religious minorities, just to mention a few.

That’s it, Santa. Next year, with luck, I’ll be writing to you about world peace.

– Love, Ireland

Dil Wickremasinghe grew up in Italy and Sri Lanka.

Róisín Ingle

Irish Times columnist

Dear Santa – Here’s my list:

1. Please can you provide high-speed internet for all. You probably read recently that one in five of us has never been online, which means a lot of people are missing out on some seriously hilarious cat videos.

Please sort out this injustice.

2. We need a really big, not-rubbish movie to be made here to boost employment and distract us from grim news. There should be jobs for loads of extras, and it should take at least a year to make.

Please let it star Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender and Johnny Depp – just because they are such talented actors, no other reason.

3. Could we have a Terry’s Chocolate Orange for everybody in the audience? It would save a lot of rows on December 25th.

Thanks in advance. Drive safely.

– Love, Ireland.

PS I was going to ask you to introduce lithium or Prozac into our water, but thank goodness this looks like it’s nearly sorted. By the time I write next year, we won’t need anything from you because we’ll all be so “happy”. Brilliant.

John McManus

Irish Times business editor

Dear Santa – What I really, really want for Christmas is for my friend David to make up with my friends Angela and Nicolas. They have fallen out over the rules for our club, and I am very worried about it. It makes my tummy hurt.

David is kind of my best friend – I go on loads of sleepovers and play dates at his house – but he is now saying he may leave the club or not follow the rules.

If he does, then I will not know who to play with in the school yard next year.

If I play with David, then Angela and Nicolas might start bullying me cos I owe them lots of pocket money after spending all of mine on toys and stuff that is now all broken.

I also really want everybody in Ireland to start spending their pocket money next year.

I have decided not to cut their pocket money very much this year and instead want everybody to buy stuff and then the more of this thing called VAT will fill up my piggy bank.

I am scared that if people don’t spend and I don’t get enough of this VAT stuff, then I might not be able to give Angela and Nicolas back their money.

Could you also make the boys from the big school – St Market’s – be a bit nicer please? They keep telling tales about me and my friends behind our backs.

– Love, Ireland

Fintan O’Toole

Irish Times columnist

Dear Herr Claus – My clients Paddy and Patricia wish to draw your attention to their belief that some of your representatives have been guilty of gross misrepresentation.

A troika is a three-horse open sleigh, is it not? And as the one that came to visit us jingled all the way, they made the reasonable assumption that it carried emissaries from your good self.

There seems, however, to be serious nonperformance of the usual terms and conditions that have applied previously to such arrangements.

Our records clearly show that the existing contract states that if my clients watch out, refrain from crying and pouting and are good for goodness’ sake, you for your part will reward them with unspecified but substantial beneficence.

We do appreciate that, as per the fiscal contract, it is necessary for you to make a list and check it twice to enable you to distinguish the naughty from the nice. In this case, however, there can be no dispute as to the firm presence of my clients in the latter category.

You have observed my clients both sleeping and awake. They have been, as you are thus no doubt aware, the best boys and girls in Europe. They have been humble, grateful, obedient, quiet and patient. In the face of all provocations, they have redoubled their positivity, going forward. My clients are satisfied that no evidence of a single pout can be produced.

It is with some degree of incredulity, therefore, that my clients received your offer of recompense; to wit, one sack of ashes.

Unless you execute the existing contract, and confirm the accepted principle of rewarding the good, we shall be forced to plead that the nonexistence of a sanity clause allows my clients to cancel the agreement.

– Love, Ireland

A Dame Street Occupier

Central Plaza, Dublin 2

Dear Santa – I’m writing this letter because for years I had a great job and an income and was able to buy all my own presents. Things have got so bad that, as a last resort, I’ve started to believe in you.

This year, I genuinely want a bag of coal. They’ve cut the fuel allowance.

My ma used to tell us when we were bold that we were moving house so Santy couldn’t find us. That’s why I’ve moved to the city centre. I’m building a chimney next to my tent. This year, I’m going to buy a new hat and stand looking out the window of my tent, so people will think I got some clothes.

I’d better finish this quickly cos my hour’s run out at the internet shop. Had to sell my laptop to pay my carbon tax.

Before I go, here’s a song I wrote:

Jingle bells, Bank debt smells

Of corruption, compliance and greed

How much fun can gamblers have

If their mistakes are all “guaranteed”?

To be honest, Santa, I don’t actually need your help. I just wrote this to get my hopes up. Keeps me warm at night, thinking you’ll be coming along and sorting out the world for the 99 per cent. But I know you won’t, and the Government won’t, and the people who actually run this country won’t. At this stage it looks like it’s up to the people themselves.

So all I’m asking, Santa, is that you look after all the kind and generous people who have been supporting us, and all those barely coping through these long winter months. – Love, Ireland

Frank McNally

Irish Times columnist

Dear Santa – I’m a bit confused. According to your Wikipedia entry, you owe your existence either to a Dutch/north European tradition or to one from the old Greek/Byzantine empire. Which is it? I have to admit I’m rooting for the Dutch answer. Otherwise, I might as well tear this letter up now, because we’re in even bigger trouble than I thought.

Then again, maybe you’re a mixture of the two. If so, you should have a unique understanding of Ireland’s current plight. We too have a confused pedigree. According to all the atlases, we’re an island in the north Atlantic. And, if that’s true, it would certainly explain the weather.

But in another tradition, popular with economists, we’re also considered to be part of southern Europe. I think it’s just a metaphor. Either way, maybe you should put up a note about it in your dispatch department – “Ireland: still where it was last year” – to avoid any unfortunate mix-ups.

On to the crux of my letter, Santa, and the most valuable thing you could give us this year: advice. As you may have heard, we’re in dire financial straits. Our dilemma is that we have to borrow enormous sums to pay back debts while also making severe cuts that depress the growth we need if we’re ever to become creditworthy again.

And yet your world-famous elf operation has been pulling this trick off for centuries. Minimal or zero growth on the one hand; huge annual debt repayment – to all the good boys and girls in the world – on the other. How is it done, Santa? Does the strain never get to you? Are you ever tempted to burn some of those junior stocking holders, especially considering the way they hang their socks up so close to the chimney?

Maybe you can’t divulge these secrets, for reasons of commercial sensitivity. I respect that. So, alternatively, I have a more modest request.

You may have noticed, Santa, that we have an awful lot more houses in Ireland than we had 10 years ago. They have chimneys and everything. What they don’t have, as you’ll see from your lists, is children. Or indeed people. The houses are, in short, empty.

But what do you say we ignore this little technicality for a year or two? And that you deliver presents to all those houses at Christmas, based on an assumption that each unit contains an average of five – no, let’s say 10 – good children. High-end presents, ideally: Xboxes, laptops, iPhones and so on.

We could then flog all the stuff on and use the proceeds to pay off debt. How about it, Santa? We’ve been good – honest. Even the Taoiseach thinks so. He says none of it was our fault, and we believe him.

– Love, Ireland

Colm O’Regan

Comedian

Dear Santa – We would love it if you would consider moving your European headquarters and toy-distribution base to a purpose-built facility just outside the M50.

We are aware it would not be an easy decision for you to leave Lapland, so we would like to outline some of the advantages of relocating to Ireland.

Our temperate and consistent climate makes this country an ideal place to cheaply house the large server farms and data centres that are no doubt vital to your business. An organisation such as yours, which delivers presents to millions of children around the world by flying through the sky, must surely be very dependent on cloud computing.

Ireland is home to a well-educated and skilled workforce, but at this stage they’ll be glad to get anything, so whatever you have going in the call centres would be grand. In addition, financially straitened times have forced a growing number of our population to acquire new skills in mysteriously relocating consumer goods to their homes. So they would make excellent assistants.

As a final gesture of goodwill, we are willing to enshrine in the Constitution the esteem in which we hold you by altering any necessary articles to replace the word “President” with “Santa”.

This will require a referendum, and we anticipate some adverse public reaction to such a drastic change. We feel if it’s presented as a referendum about whether they want Christmas, however, the people of Ireland will make the right decision.

Of course, we understand that getting this present is contingent on us remaining nice and avoiding any naughtiness. As a peripheral member of the EU, we are well used to these conditions. – Love, Ireland (Age 90½)

PS No more surprises

Colm O'Regan's show Dislike! The Facebook Guide to Crisisis at the Project Arts Centre, Temple Bar, Dublin, tonight at 8.15pm. See colmoregan.com

Norman Freeman

Author

Dear Santa – I know this is an unusual request, but could you ever write a letter to us? This letter would earnestly ask citizens of the State, but especially those in commerce and entertainment, to confine the promotion of Christmas to the month of December.

Santa, this request is not just for our sake but for yours. Your standing in the community is being diminshed by overfamiliarity for too long a period. Your ruddy, beaming face appears in advertisements in print and on TV as early as September. On a warm, sunny day in August this year I saw it on a large banner stretched along the outside of a public house. The message urged people to book now for their Christmas party.

People, young and old, are so stressed out by the marathon that is Christmas that they become bad tempered. And, inevitably, some of the ill-humour is directed towards you or one of your friends. I heard a sullen fellow struggling out of a supermarket, growling to himself: “If I hear Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer one more time, I’ll go mad.”

And only yesterday evening I witnessed a scene that would have saddened you. Outside a busy shopping centre, a boy of eight was throwing a tantrum. As he was being bundled into the back of the car by his angry mother, he shouted “I hate Santa Claus.” It’s all to do with the strain of trying to manage through a festival of such sheer length. That’s why a letter advising us all to shorten our Christmas would be welcome. It would be there under the Christmas tree, alongside the multicoloured cardigan and “the hideous tie so kindly meant” described by the poet John Betjeman. – Love, Ireland

Norman Freeman is the author of Seaspray and Whisky: Reminiscences of a Tramp Ship Voyage

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