Alan Cumming’s letter to Santa
Dear Father Christmas,
Okay, I know you’re only a concept, an allegorical, mystical benign type whose image and message has been absconded and warped by the corporate retail machine BUT…
It’s 2015, you need to stop. All you do is make people who are the most privileged in the world feel more complacent and privileged. You’re a bad role model. You shouldn’t be telling kids to pretend to be good soyou can throw some pollution-making pointless toys down their non-existent chimney! You should extol the virtues of being good just because it’s a decent thing to be, and encourage them to look outside their blinkered lives and try to understand that constantly yearning for material gain has never done anyone any good,ever.
Show us a sign, Father Christmas! Get with the program! Don’t be such a pawn, and a dangerous pawn at that. Have you ever heard of Ubuntu? You should look it up. I think it’s what you used to be about before you got hijacked by the barons of commerce.
It means we’re all in this together,we’re all connected, and we can’t truly be happy or full or content when there are others who aren’t any of those things.
That’s what I think you should be preaching.
And talking of which, that’s my sermon over.
Love and peace,
Alan Cumming
Alan’s letter to Santa is part of Letters Live, which announces a limited run at Freemasons’ Hall, London from 10-15th March 2016. Inspired by Shaun Usher’s international best-selling Letters of Note series, Letters Live is a live celebration of the enduring power of literary correspondence. Each show always features a completely different array of great performers, reading remarkable letters written over the centuries and from around
Alan Cumming is an award-winning actor, singer, writer, producer and director. He recently starred in an acclaimed one-man staging of Macbeth on Broadway, and appears on the Emmy Award-winning television show The Good Wife. He won a Tony Award for his portrayal of the Emcee in the Broadway musical Cabaret, a role he has reprised in 2014. He hosts PBS Masterpiece Mystery and has appeared in numerous films, including Spy Kids, Titus, X2: X-Men United, The Anniversary Party, Any Day Now and Eyes Wide Shut. He is also the author of a novel, Tommy’s Tale.