An open letter to Richard Dawkins from Father Christmas

Dear Mr. Dawkins

As I sat in the pub the other night sharing a couple of pints with a good friend of mine, we'll call him Jaycee for the purposes of this mail, he mentioned that I might want to look out for you. We both have a number of responsibilities in the run up to Christmas culminating in a busy day or so around Christmas itself and these could be made considerably more difficult should a well respected author such as yourself choose to discredit us at this, our busiest time of year. It would inevitably lead to a severe drop in custom and, for my part, a number of redundancies within the toy industry.

So this is a plea to bear in mind the consequences of any expose you may be planning into my supposed non-existence. I depend on a very high turnover to maintain a rather slim profit margin and should this drop, for example as a result of a diminishing number of children who actually believe in me, then it will hit the business hard and the people that suffer most will be those children who have maintained their faith during the hard times. Them and the elves, who will struggle to support their families on benefits (although elves tend to breed like rabbits and have large families so are likely to be provided for rather well under the British system, I hope you are prepared for a new immigrant minority in the country).

Perhaps if you do feel the need to spread rumours about my mythological status you could wait until January, when I will be holidaying in the Bahamas. That should at least give the controversy a chance to blow over before the Christmas rush begins anew around October.

I hope I can count on your co-operation in this matter and that I will be able to assure Jaycee when I see him next week that you are capable of compassion towards those amongst us who have the misfortune to be "existence challenged". I know that he would certainly take it as a good sign, if not a sign of good faith.

Sincerely yours

K. Kringle Esq.