As a young child growing up, and maybe even now, I remember getting so excited for Christmas.

I helped my parents decorate and wore nothing but red or green and hummed Christmas carols so Santa would see I was a good boy. The most important part of being a kid were the letters I wrote to Santa.

In these letters, I wrote compelling arguments as to why I was a good boy, even though I was a little rotten, and then I pleaded for him to bring that one toy that I always wanted. But that tradition is dying and changing to a new form.

New technology is dominating the way we interact. Email is old while texting is new. Face-to-face meetings have been replaced with video chats and Tupac is alive and performing at concerts from the grave. It isn’t the future that scares me, but that children are now able to directly contact Santa Claus.

Websites, emails and video chat rooms have been set up with the big guy himself so children can talk to Santa directly. This takes away from actually imagining what Santa looks and acts like.

“It kinda ruins kids’ imagination and their image of who Santa is,” said junior Brianna Egeland. “It takes away the real Santa feeling.”

We all watch the movies, hear the songs and are told throughout our childhood who Santa is and how he acts. This was the one thing we could actually be curious about as children. Making Santa a tangible thing will just make things worse for them.

“I think it’s weird. I feel like moving it online is just exaggerating it more and making it worse for when they do find out he’s not real,” said junior Jade Gurule. “Letters were good and it just shows how we ditched tradition and are moving towards the new social media world.”

Writing letters has more grand meaning than just practicing cursive and getting a gift.

Writing to Santa instilled hope in kids’ hearts.

I know what you’re saying right now: “Rafe, it doesn’t matter how kids contact Santa as long as they do.”

But it does matter. Technology is a great thing for us, but at the same time we are de-sensitizing our future generations.

Rafael Padilla
Staff Writer
Published Dec. 12, 2012