Dear Santa,I hope you’re staying cozy at the North Pole and resting up for your big night of special deliveries. There is even enough snow way down here in Minnesota for us to enjoy a white Christmas.One of the first things I should say in this rare letter is that I’m sorry I haven’t written for so many years. I think I forgot how to make wishes — or at least stopped believing they’d come true.I always knew that Santa was more than a portly man in a snowsuit (no offense). I knew you existed in "love and generosity and devotion." That’s how New York Sun editor Francis Pharcellus explained your existence to Virginia in an 1887 editorial, anyway.He wrote, "Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. … Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world."My own Santa letter has been difficult to write because the things I want for Christmas aren’t anything your elves can make: I want to have time to read good books, shop with my sisters, hang out with my Mom and laugh with my friends. I want to taste my grandma’s caramel rolls again. I want to learn half of what my Dad knows. I want to feel comfortable in my own skin and stop finding gray hairs. I want to be pleased with my work. I want enough challenges to make me strong but not so many that I am burdened … and one day have a dishwasher.I’ll just have to remember that even if all my Christmas wishes don’t come true, that you’re still at the top of the world listening to them and accepting my lists."How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus!" Francis Pharcellus said. "There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight."So, Santa, I’ll still believe in you if I don’t find a dishwasher in my kitchen and if I wake up Dec. 25 and see that you haven’t eaten the cookies I put out for you.I still believe the best things are the unseen.Until next year,