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Dear Santa,

My teacher smiled when I said that I wanted to investigate you for our end of year presentation. She wasn’t smiling when I gave my three-minute talk about you.

My Dad likes to listen to podcasts. Some of them are about sports (boring) or music (old people’s music, but he doesn’t like it when I say that). The ones I like are about crimes. Not gory ones — he won’t listen to those in the car when we’re with him. But the ones about scammers are my favourite. Dad says it’s important to know that there are some people out there who aren’t as honest as they could be. And I think that you are one of those people.

How can you be everywhere? When we went shopping a few weeks ago, you were at two different shopping centres. At the same time! You looked a bit different, that’s true, but I still refused to go and have my photo taken with you and Rosie. Maybe I should have agreed, as evidence is essential. Podcasts have taught me that.

When I started to ask questions about you, Mum and Dad were happy to answer at first. But then I could see them look at each other in the way that they do when there’s something going on that they don’t want me to know about. It makes me suspicious. Will you be a fake, like the tooth fairy? I had a list of questions ready to go, and had only asked two of them when they asked me to go outside and play.

Rosie says that you’re real and that if I keep asking questions, I won’t be getting any presents from you at Christmas. And I do want some presents. Rosie had her list ready weeks ago, even before the Elf on a Shelf appeared. I tried to tell her that as the eldest, it’s my job to look out for her. And that includes calling out scammers. But she started singing ‘Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer’ loudly to block me out.

On the podcasts, they talk to different people to get their views. So I did that too. I asked our neighbours and other kids at school. I think the neighbours would be called “unreliable sources” on a podcast. They have huge inflatable Santas in their front garden as part of their Christmas light display, and instead of answering me, they laughed and said ‘ho ho ho’. Are they on your payroll?

Some podcasts talk about fact-checking. I asked my Dad what this meant, and he said it was about making sure information was true. I asked him how long it would to fly from the North Pole to our house, and he said I could google it. So I did, but that only made it more unlikely that you’re real.

I’m sending this letter anyway. Just in case you do exist.

Merry Christmas, “Santa”.

This piece was written to a prompt on the Writer’s Digest website. The Unanswered Letter: write about a child whose letter to Santa went unanswered.

Photo: a selection of Santas