Hellish Letters to Santa

If you ever find yourself in northern Michigan, make sure to set your Waze for Frankenmuth. This year-round Christmas town features Bronner's Christmas Wonderland. Don't worry if it's July and you're covered in cherry juice from the roadside stands: At Bronner's it's always frosty and jolly in the most December 25th sense of that term. The place is a city-sized Christmas merch mecca.

According to Michigan-centric website MLive, Bronner's invites kids to submit letters to Santa and this year received the au courant yet typical marketing-driven pleadings for "iPods and iPhones, tablets, 'Frozen' paraphernalia, LEGOs and Zoomer — an interactive toy dog."

I've seen arm-length wish lists before, both from my own child and as a participant in a charity-sponsored event to purchase something for an underprivileged child.

I only did the Santa charity thing once because most of the lists asked for at least a dozen very specific and expensive items: video game systems and games, computers, electronic toys... Almost everything included a brand name. You just knew these kids were not going to be happy with some random gift from a toy drive. They wanted what they saw on TV and even the most well-meaning donor couldn't come close to satisfying their desires.

I realize that Christmas is commercialized. That it's (almost) all about the presents. But seeing wish lists adding up to many hundreds of dollars is depressing regardless of the financial situations of the children's families. I still wonder where I went wrong every time I look at what my own teen son craved, both in quantity and specificity.

Luckily the joy of Christmas morning comes from being with family and giving of yourself - not just taking. No matter how high the greed level and how impoverished the household, the magic can still happen. All it takes is a different kind of list.