(I've been asked to write something for a friend, and have been told that I can write about whatever I want to. And well, um...this has been on my mind for about a month! Enjoy x)
Well, I have 350 words to make a good first impression. Here goes: Mall Santas.
What on earth is their deal? I have just spent nineteen consecutive days working as part of a small shopping plaza’s equally small Christmas campaign. I won’t tell you what I had to do exactly, but it involved glittery wings. So we stood there for three hours a day and watched countless people walk in and leave again, their trolleys brimming with cheap beer and enough Cadbury products to feed a small army. Every now and then, children would appear, as they often seem to do. Confidently, they would stride with their mothers and fathers towards the automatic sliding doors, eager to escape the sauna for the air-con's cool caress.
Much to their horror, however, they were greeted by an old man in a cherry-red suit (most inappropriate for our climate, might I add) seated on a fake gold throne next to something that was either an angel or a fairy or something potentially frightening with too much lipstick on. A curious exchange then seemed to occur between the children and Bill (I mean, Santa). First, the kid would alter their speed to about half the pace, then they'd cling to the leg of the closest available parental, hide behind their hands or hair (or both) and smile meekly in our direction before profusely declining any offer or invitation to go and sit on this stranger’s knee.
You know what? The kids have got the right idea. Who the hell even wants to participate in that? In case you are wondering, I am not so Bah Humbug about everything. But, if you were to run a survey on the number of children under the age of, say, nine, who decline their parents’ uncharacteristically stern and persistent insistence upon their meeting with someone else's rogue Grandpa, sitting on his knee and being close enough to therefore spy the elastic band of his fake beard, I think you might find the results would be enough to shut the whole operation down, globally. Alas, tradition!
Happy New Year kids, and I hope Santa was good to you! ;)
