illustration by Dom McKenzieD
ear Santa,
I suspect you’re not too
fond of me these days.
I’m sorry I always drink
the sherry we leave out for you.
I’m sorry I strong-armed our kids
into better behaviour by convincing
them you’re monitoring us 24/
via the burglar alarm. And I do
regret that I sometimes stream
"Santa Baby". It is objectifying.
The thing is, my son wrote you
a letter recently; a task set by his
teacher, as handwriting homework.
I hope you received it? Apologies
that he appears to confuse you with
Jesus. I reckon you get that a lot.Anyway, it made me think: it
must be—what?—33 years since
I’ve written you a letter myself? So,
here are five things that I want for
Christmas. To be honest, it’s been a
release just to write them all down.
You probably get that a lot, too.(^1) A smart speaker that can’t
identify children. I used to be a bit,
"Jeff Bezos is spying on us!" about
smart speakers. But lockdown
helped me accept humanity’s future
as AI-hominid hybrids, and
conclude that I am in fact willing to
trade my privacy for the ability to set
an egg timer with my voice and
achieve perfectly browned onions.
However, each morning, while I’m
listening to The Today Programme,
my kids get Alexa to play "Baby
Shark". This is a design flaw. I
imagine you’ve got good contacts at
Amazon, given your experience in
This month, Olly Mann takes a leaf from his son's book and
writes his own letter to Jolly Old Saint Nick...
Letters To Santa
Olly Mann presents
Four Thought for
BBC Radio 4, and
the podcasts The
Modern Mann, The
Week Unwrapped
and The Retrospectors
14 • DECEMBER 2021
IT’S A MANN’S WORLD