A Letter to the Mall

It's almost winter and I want to puke.

Polaris Fashion Center
1500 Polaris Parkway
Columbus, OH 43240
Attn: Michael Minns, General Manager

Dear Mr. Minns,

As the Holiday Season draws near my heart fills with the good cheer of the Christmas season. You know, Christmas was always my favorite holiday as a child. My Mother, a generally strict woman of Norwegian descent, would wake us at sunrise to begin preparing the Christmas Dinner, a traditional meal of pickled nuts and lutefisk. I would go down into the cellar, where the lutefisk had been maturing in a bucket of lye water for weeks, and carefully strain off the caustic liquid as I dipped the harvested fish flesh in a bath of rainwater we collected in the summer. Sometimes the lye would splash and scald my legs, but Mother always soothed my cries, explaining that "a good little boy has as many lye scars on his legs as there are stars in the sky!"

Sadly, now that I have come of age I find myself missing these Christmas traditions. I would like to somehow recapture that youthful wonder, and wish to be your Santa Claus this year. There is only one small problem - I weigh 130 lbs. and stand 6 feet tall. I cannot help it, growing up we lived by the traditional Finnish nursery rhyme, "Figs and breads with meat and cheese, these will make your soul diseased." Thus, I have always been a little on the slender side. Fortunately, if there is one thing a Norwegian can do, it is beard-growing. I myself have a beard weighing three-tenths of a merke (measured through water displacement).

I have been thinking, Michael, and I believe a thinner Santa might actually be a boon to Polaris Fashion Center. Consider that the country is suddenly very weight-concious, and I could teach the children about dieting/hunger. Or, perhaps we could take a new spin on Santa Claus together. I have noticed the mainstream media is very interested in origin stories lately. We could give Santa an origin story; it stands to reason that he was healthier in his younger days. We could finally find out how he builds his red suit!

Please let me know what you think of my proposal, because it takes me several weeks to shape a beard, and I currently sport a Garibaldi style with a Germanic-waxed moustache. That would never work!

Courteously Patient,

The Correspondent

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