It's Not Easy Being Santa

By Rick Reilly, Sports Illustrated, Dec 27, 2004-Jan 3, 2005.

An interesting article from Sports Illustrated. And a sad one:
(snip)
"Kids trust Santa, though. They'll tell Santa anything. So I set out to conduct the Santa Sports Survey. Disguised as Saint Nick, I would spend 90 minutes at each of three Boys & Girls Clubs in metro Denver. I loaded the trunk with toys and trinkets, borrowed a Santa suit from the Cherry Creek Mall and called Susen Mesco of Amerevents.com, which runs one of the best Santa Schools in the country.

...

I kept trying to hit them with survey questions like, "Do you view athletes as role models in this age of ...," and they kept hitting me with real life. "Santa, for Christmas could you make the bill collectors stop coming?" one boy said. "It makes my mom cry." A little girl said, "Santa, could you bring us a new house? The one we have now leaks all the time." Lots of kids wanted hats and shoes and coats. "I want clothes," said one boy. What kind? "The warm kind," he said. Another kid wanted to be an NBA star and make "a million dollars." "What would you spend it on?" I asked. "Doctors," she said, "for my cousin. She's four. She has cancer." (/snip)

The whole article requires a subscription, but you get the jist.
This resonates. This is Democratic morality. Fixing things like this, that should be our goal.

(Whole article at http://premium.si.cnn.com/pr/subs/siexclusive/2004/writ... / but requires a subscription)