Dear Santa,
I haven’t written to you in a long time – but I lost your postal address while moving. I know it sounds incredible – how is it possible to lose Santa’s address? Well.. you travel a lot, you should know how crazy it is to prepare the baggage and leave… Anyway, it’s lucky that you read Clew Magazine from Lapland, so you can read my letter here, on Clew, before starting your Christmas journey.
Your long journey is about to start! I hope that you are taking care of your health, with all the climatic changes from Lapland to the rest of the world I can’t imagine how your sensitive throat can be affected. Yes, I know that you get grumpy when I start to worry about you, but, you know, friends take care of each other. So, do you want to avoid that the pitch of your voice will be severely tested, and that your squeaking voice will upset some tender little boy or girl so much that they will prefer to meet the Befana instead of you? Great! Then, listen to my advice: Some hot water with lemon and a bit of honey and some juice made from the oranges I sent to you from Sicily some time ago. I know, there were so many, but you know, in Sicily we tend to exaggerate with food, especially if it’s for a gift. We love being hospitable!
Now don’t go grumbling to your elves because of the advice I’m giving you! Put some more honey and lemon in your hot water and you’ll be sweetened immediately!
As you know, I’m not that far from you, I could come directly from here to your home, but I don’t want to miss the show of you climbing down my chimney, I think it’s a priceless moment of great amusement!
Santa’s neighbour, Lund, Sweden
Last time it was so hilarious! Sorry, I don’t want make fun of you, dear Santa, but that scene was so funny! I’m sorry for that small accident, but I couldn’t have imagined that you decided to climb down my chimney (I told you it didn’t seem to fit you), and certainly, my dogs couldn’t have imagined it either! First you got stuck inside the chimney (I also told you that we don’t have the old chimney anymore, remember?); then, once you freed yourself by holding your breath and jump out of the chimney, you had to start running from my dogs! The big Santa running from a dachshund! You know, they were just curious to hear your high pitched voice (finally, I did tell you to have some orange juice!). They thought you were not the original Santa maybe, so once you called them by their names, they immediately stopped and started to give you an enthusiastic welcome! Well, it was a good way to have you get some exercise! You should do it more often, but without dogs behind you!
In the end, it was funny even for you, especially when one of my dogs, Chloé, the smaller one, pretended to come with you as one of your reindeer to help you with the delivery of gifts all around the world. Then she realized that she would have missed her sister Laika too much and that it was better to stay.
I know that you have so many letters to read, so after my holy recommendations and some souvenirs, I’ll get to the point, or you will have the right to be grumpy!
I think that you need to know what the gift I’m asking for for Christmas is. This year I need to ask you for a very, very special gift. Could you, please, bring my dogs here to me? I haven’t seen them in such a long time, and they still have some reservations with regards to Skype communication. Please don’t let the smaller one come with you as a reindeer, she can be really resolute! Let her do the dachshund, curled up and covered with something warm, she’s as much sweet tempered as sensitive to the cold. As for the bigger one, Laika, she has an enchanting gaze, magnetic, and as every border collie she’s a self-taught sheepdog, so even if she has never worked as a sheepdog she has some incredible innate abilities, so do not worry if she starts to collect your reindeer! Tell them to make her happy! And then, come here! This would be my very special gift.
However, I also have a second request, another small thing I’d like to ask you: I know that you are the kind of person who loves traditions and also respecting traditions, but I was thinking… could you please come with penguins instead of reindeer? After all that playing with Laika running to collect them, I’m sure that they would be happy to relax for a while. So – Laika, Chloé and the penguins! This sounds like a great story! My wonderful Christmas story…
And finally, dear Santa, hear my special prayer: Take care of lonely souls, dressed only with their solitude, those who lost their way, their sense of Christmas and the sense of their days, waiting for something or someone who will never come back again. Give to every one of them the scent of a huge love embracing and cradling them all. Give them the relief of a deep, pure love, as a sparkling veil taking care of them. Erase solitude from their lonely souls, and feed their hearts with joy and blissful moments.
That would be my very special, wonderful Christmas story.
Give them a sense of Christmas…
Letter to Santa from Silvia La Rosa, December 2015
CLEW 
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