Letter to the Chimney Man

Dear Santa, Let me be blunt. Do you actually exist? This querulous query draws me, a humble divorcee, into angry arguments with some of my quasi-academic friends—not to mention all my X’s in Texas. It’s like this. Over flagons of easy-on-the-pocket sherry in the faculty lounge, academics insist on insisting that what seems real is actually unreal and what appears to be unreal is really as real as yellow violets on April days. Therefore, they say, it doesn’t matter whether I believe in you or not, since what IS just IS. So let me get straight to the point. It is my…