Yes, Mr. Trump, there is a Santa Claus.
He may not own luxury properties around the world, live in a gold-plated apartment or travel on a private jet. In fact, he prefers to live off the grid — in a cabin on the frozen tundra up north somewhere. He tools around town on a sled pulled by a group of trusty reindeer. He’s a craftsman of sorts, and they say he does a lot of pro-bono work.
He swears by snail mail, sneers at Twitter and attests to the therapeutic power of pouring one’s heart out by putting pen to paper. There’s something magical in those tons of scribbled missives he receives, each addressed to ‘North Pole’. Nuance, he firmly asserts, cannot be conveyed in 140 characters or less.
Much like another man of Middle Eastern descent whose humble entrance into this would, celebrated on Christmas Day, would radically challenge the power structure of the times, he believes all children—nay, all people— are created equal regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin or financial status. He is aware that imperfect people are both darkness and light, and that sometimes fear causes our greater angels to take flight in the most ignoble of ways. He has style. He has grace. He has character.
The election of Donald Trump has simply oozed trauma for so many of us. We are, perhaps, more tired and achy than normal, or more worried about just about everything. We are having dreams of an apocalyptic variety — earthquakes, tornados and the occasional gargantuan fire-breathing iguana raining from the sky. Hope is not forgotten, just buried, as if under a heavy Christmas snowfall waiting for the deep thaw of spring. We are certainly not ‘special snowflakes’ or wusses or sore losers. The problem: We have been too strong and, perhaps, too silent, on the things that really matter—equality, faith, hope, charity and love— for way too long.
Now, we find our voices.
If the Trump campaign had intended to denounce, in no uncertain terms, the bigotry, racism, misogyny, and xenophobia fueled by its rhetoric, it would have done so. If it had intended to admit great wealth is to be responsibly safeguarded and used for the betterment of humanity rather than stockpiled for a selected few, it would have done so. We rightly fear an incoming administration full of bombast and bluster, extraordinarily ill-suited, in terms of temperament and judgment, for the task of responsible, far-sighted and inclusive leadership in a complex and multifaceted world.
At some point in our lives, many of us will have the opportunity to read ’Yes Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus,’ the 1897 Letter to the Editor response penned by New York Sun editorial writer Francis Pharcellus Church in response to eight year old Virginia O’Hanlon’s query. Church, who had experienced the horrors of the Civil War as a war correspondent, navigated deftly the deep divisions of America during the Gilded Age in his impassioned, erudite and ethereal reply.
The piece is a perennial favorite holiday meditation of mine, an erstwhile elixir of hope for often dark times not so unlike our own. The Gilded Age was a time of great Industrial progress. Wealthy tycoons amassed fortunes beyond the wildest dreams of factory workers and laborers. The brutal discrimination, and social and economic woes endured by women, newly-freed slaves, workers and so many others were obscured from public view, as if by thin gold gilting.
We must eschew the shiny veneer of the Trump administration, the idea that billionaires are best suited for cabinet positions, the idea that America can be bought and sold, that silence, abuse and discrimination are okay as long as the money keeps rolling in.
All that glitters, as the saying goes, is not gold. This divisive, fear-based agenda, quite frankly, deserves a lump of coal.
Everywhere, I have seen something incredible — ordinary Americans are speaking truth to power in profound and hopeful ways — standing up for the rights of women, people of color, the LGBTQ community and speaking out against Islamophobia. People are also speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves — animals and the health of our planet.
If there is something that is to be gleaned from the aftershocks of Election 2016, it is this: we, as a people, will grow in empathy and solidarity with those men and women of our world who are expected to suffer because that’s ‘just the way it is’. We’re better than that.
This Trump presidency is a turning point, a wake-up call, a great battle cry from the universe, sharp and resonant and clear, cutting to the heart of all this division and complacency. In the spirit of the holiday and beyond, we find our voices.