Fuck Santa.

Christmas Eve.

When I was a kid, this was the one day of the year where the universe gave me permission to dream.

To hope.

It was the one time of the year where I was told that it was okay to ask the universe (aka that badass, package-carrying, sleigh driving motherfucker Santa aka my parents) for what I wanted.

I could be unfiltered. Unashamed. It was okay for me to tell everyone exactly what it is that I truly wanted. The Sears and JC Pennys catalog were – as Sears so boldly (and smartly) marketed – Wish Books, filled with things that…

…if I would just ask

…if I would just make that list

Just might be mine.

And all I had to do is ask.

On Christmas morning, having slept the sleep of a college student coming down from a cocaine-drenched high, I’d wake. I’d rush downstairs. I’d wait for my brother, sister, and parents to wake.

I would make more noise than was necessary to ensure that this waking process was hastened.

And all because I couldn’t wait to see which wishes of mine had come true.

As I grew older, the lists became shorter. Santa became my parents. The sleigh became a bedroom closet where I could snoop when they were at work.

The list of wishes faded like Vanilla Ice’s career.

I realized that I wasn’t growing older. I was regressing.

There was no growing at all being done.

Fuck fuck and fuckity fuck fuck.

My lists of wishes and dreams faded until they disappeared. I built a life that saw birthdays and Christmases as the only days where I could receive without guilt. I still felt guilty for asking.

The world around me expected me to give, give, give and all the bloody year long.

But I had to wait. I got tired of waiting so I stopped asking. I told my heart and soul to shhhhhhhhhh and why couldn’t they fall in step with the rhythm of every day life?

Why couldn’t they just be content with the plain fact that people like me don’t get things/men/jobs like those other people. Those other people.

Those “other people” – I’d never met them but they were the ones who had it easy. Who got everything they wanted.

I hated “other people.”

And this, my dearest readers, is bullshit to capital Nth degree. This kind of bullshit is reserved for situations so dire and desperate, sad and costly. It’s the kind of bullshit that we spend our lives accumulating and then drowning in until one day we wake up to see the world as we’ve built it:

Hopeless.

Without potential.

Lacking the Christmas Eve-style joyous anticipation that makes our hearts beat a bit faster…

Our sleep lose meaning because there’s nothing on the other side but more of the shitty and flavorless same.

And it’s time for all of that bullshit to end. Because bitches – it’s motherfucking Christmastime up in this joint and it’s about damn time you owned it.

Yeah, you.

The one who thinks dreams aren’t for you and that big people can’t make lists of wishes and wants and have all of them come true. You are the commandant of your very own army of summer hat-wearing hedgehogs, surrounding you – protecting you and yelling AY YAY YAY! *

*because all hedgehog armies speak Spanish IN MY MIND

– as you do the work every day to bring that Christmas list back.

And while we’re on the subject, who the hell made the rule that grown-ups can’t give themselves gifts? And I’m not talking about leasing a new pimpin’ ride or blowing your every dime on SHIT.

Shit is just that – SHIT.

We’ll bust ass day after day, working towards someone else’s goals and getting paid someone else’s money so we can buy shit that doesn’t matter that we eventually give away to Goodwill so it can be yet again someone else’s shit. Why? Because for a moment, shit makes us feel good. Like the cocaine. Like the endorphin-drenched rush of an ass-beating workout.

Like the rush that ruled our childlike hearts as we waited for our wishes to manifest on those few days where we were told it was okay to dream – because there was a day on the calendar where those dreams would actually come true.

Today, it’s Christmas. It’s your birthday. It’s all 8 crazy nights of an Adam Sandler kind of Haunakah rolled into one. And if you want anything worth having you have to treat every day like it’s

THOSE

FEW

DAYS

And MAKE YOUR LIST.

Right now. Make it.

Forget about all of the stuff you don’t want. Don’ts are for dickheads and you, my precious manatee of love, are anything but a dickhead.

Make the list that’s filled with everything that makes your soul smile. Everything that makes you uncomfortable to ask for. Everything that tells everyone that YES, I AM GOING TO END THAT SENTENCE WITH A PREPOSITION AND I’M GOING TO LIKE IT SO MUCH THAT I’M GOING TO DRESS UP AS A PREPOSITION FOR HALLOWEEN.

Everything that you shouldn’t have the audacity to ask for but by all that is chocolate and holy and served on a stick, today you will ask for.

Because it’s waiting for you – and it’s about time you stopped living a life waiting for permission.

Permission from some fat dude in a red suit who can only seem to get off his ass once a year to bring you only a fraction of what you ask for. After hundreds of years, it’s time for this asshole to join a gym and think a bit more of himself than causing his magical reindeer a metric ass ton of consternation because they have to haul his fur-draped sperm whale-sized self across the world’s nights skies in 24 hours. Fuck this guy and fuck him in his bloated spleen with a purple plastic goldfish.

Because you’ve got shit to do.

You’ve got shit to get. And it’s not going to be the kind of shit that just becomes more shit. It’s going to be platinum – the kind of shit you look at and spontaneously turn on your inner black girl for and go, “Awwwwyeah.”

And you’ll never get it if you don’t start making that list.

Because today is Christmas. It’s your birthday. Today and every day are the days where you can make that list for the universe and stop waiting.

Start dreaming.

Start asking.

Because baby – whoever lied to you and me and everyone else and said that the days of making wish lists are over – is a fuckwit and deserves no more of your time or attention.

You make that list and then you do one thing every day to put you one step closer to making at least one wish on that list come true.

But there’s a caveat –

You have to have a WHY for everything on that list. Why you want it and why it’s going to make this life of yours better.

Because otherwise, it’s just shit. And it’ll make you happy for a little while and then go back to being the shit it is and always has been.

So, my little manatees of love, assemble your Hispanic hedgehog army. Make your list. Get to marching and bring that itchy-can’t-sleep-because-I’m-so-goddamn-excited-about-my-NEXT feeling back to your life.

Because right now, we have THIS life. THIS life is our priority. And if we can leave it with a list of dreams fulfilled a fuckzillion miles long…

Just imagine what Christmas is going to look like when you get to that next lifetime.

Fuck Santa and fuck birthdays.

The fact that the sun came up today is the only permission you need to ask for anything and everything you’ve always wanted.