It wasn’t that she wanted to be. It wasn’t as if she believed in Santa and expected to catch him coming down the chimney onto the coal-effect gas fire in the livingroom. After all, she was nearly eight now. She felt scornful as she thought back to last Christmas when she’d still been a baby, a mere six year old who still believed that there really was an elf factory in Lapland where they made the toys; that there really was a team of reindeer who magically pulled a sleigh across the skies and somehow got round all the world’s children with sackloads of gifts; that she could really write a letter to Santa and he’d personally choose and deliver her presents. Of course, she’d known for ages before then that the fat men in red suits and false beards who sat her on their knees in an assortment of gaudy grottoes weren’t the real Santa. They were just men who dressed up and acted as messengers for the real Father Christmas, passing on her desires and giving her a token of what would be waiting for her on Christmas morning.
