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My letter to Santa, 2022

 




Dear Santa,


How’s things with Mrs Claus and your helpers? Busier than usual, I imagine, given world events this year, so this email is just to let you know that a letter from me is on the way.

 

I’ll begin with my gratitude to you for putting a post box conveniently in my neighbourhood supermarket – and early too! You must know about the challenges I have with mail delivery. It was difficult writing to you from Afghanistan and Sudan, because, like you, I usually work over the festive season. What a surprise to see the post box! Red too, which, of course, is your colour! – not the typical French yellow post box.

 

Thank you also for having the intelligence to re-purpose the red post box. I see that the post box has EuR on the front (for Europe), instead of EIIR after Elizabeth Regina the second – Queen Elizabeth – given the sad end to her long reign. 

 

I’m writing to express my Christmas wish. I’d really like world peace this year, if you can manage it. More than the past 35 years of my requests for it, it’s needed more than ever now. 

 

I mean more than peace from conflict; I mean peace of mind too. 

 

People are having severe financial difficulties due to inflation and government mismanagement and corruption, as well as the ramifications of the pandemic; they can’t afford heating or cooling, or even food. It’s a dire situation. Many don’t have a place to sleep and they face hardships every day. More than that, as you know, it affects their mental health. If possible, can your ease their load – physically, mentally, and spiritually – a  lot? I don’t mean to be greedy, but people need relief from stress and anxiety – like being free from crime, and able to access quality health services, and able to go for walks in Nature, and getting jackasses of their backs who are causing pain and heartache for everyone. I‘m sure you’re aware of these geopolitical and local jackasses.

 

The environment needs peace of mind too. Animals and plants, and all living things, are surely worried and uncertain about their potential extinction. Many don’t know how long they have left to live on this planet.

 

I know you write a list of everyone who has been naughty or nice – and you check it twice. I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of politicians on my naughty list this year. Maybe it‘s not too late for them to be nice in the coming months. 

 

You’ll be extra super busy this year, but I know you’re the best time manager in the world, wtih the best helpers, who just seem to make magic happen. I love watching you and your reindeer tavel across the globe in December – the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Santa tracker is so cool! 

 

In summary, I’m just asking for world peace (again). 

 

I still believe in you Santa.

 

Much love, 

Martina 


(I’m in Paris – I’ll leave spécialités de boulangerie et délicieuses carottes (pastries and carrots) out for you and your deers!)














 



MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international human rights-based consultant ineducation, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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