Mukilteo Beacon - Your Hometown News Source

Santa, like life, sometimes surprises you, and you get things that weren’t on your wish list. Worse yet comes the day when you discover that neither Santa nor the life you envisioned was real.

The holiday season always reminds me of the time my 6-year-old daughter came home from first grade ecstatic about a Christmas present she was expecting. Some teachers had decided it would be fun if the fifth and first graders exchanged Santa letters.

The plan was for the first graders to write Santa about what they wanted for Christmas, then each fifth grader would be assigned to respond as Santa to...