Dear Santa, will you be dropping by this year?

I was probably about six years old and I know from television that Santa likes cookies with milk. So I set out a plate with a couple of cookies and a small cup of milk, when I felt my parents weren’t looking. I didn’t want to have to explain to them why I did that. I didn’t have the words for it, though I knew in my heart, I had to do it. Since Santa Claus was made aware to me as a child, I had written ‘Dear Santa’ letters to him hoping he would gift me something nice. Alas, I always received things from people I knew that weren’t from Santa Claus.

This thought came to me earlier today, as I was gathering my cups before heading down to the kitchen. My wife remarked, “Can I go down to the kitchen with you?” in her girly squeaky voice. This is her way of being cute with me. So I responded, “No, you have to climb up to the roof top and signal Santa down to us.” I mumbled some thoughts to myself afterwards, “Maybe he won’t miss our house this time around.”

So my question is, “What does it take to get on Santa’s Good Person list?”

Thinking back all 37 years of my life so far, I have not received a single gift from Santa Claus. Well, that one time when I was 12 sitting on the Fake Santa’s lap at my dad’s company’s Christmas banquet didn’t quite count. While I was nervous lining up to sit on Fake Santa’s lap, I was looking forward to the big present waiting for me at the end of the photo ordeal. It was a set of Nerf ping pong stuff. My brother got the exact same stuff.

Anyway, what does it take to get on Santa’s Good Person list? What must a person do or be to be considered a good person? If I measure how good I am based on the amount and size of the gifts I have received from Santa in the last 36 years of my life, then I score pretty badly. I have failed every year since December 1979 as a good person.

Satire aside however, I have never really wondered whether I am a good person or not. I haven’t even once said to someone that I am a good person. I am pretty sure I haven’t even said I ‘think’ I am a good person. At the end of each day, I think the only things that really matter to me isn’t if I have been a good person, but rather, someone who hasn’t done too much harm, but that in itself is more like a subtle back-of-the-mind whisper of a thought, rather than a conscious active thought process.

Though I am still curious as to how goodness is measured on Santa’s gift list. Also, if he has evolved his work environment to the latest technologies and safer work stations for his elves.