Review: Your Temporary Santa by David Levithan (My True Love Gave to Me)

Alright, today is David Levithan’s story for my “Twelve Days of Christmas” – reviewing one story per day from My True Love Gave to Me. So far, I’ve reviewed Rainbow Rowell’s “Midnights”, “The Lady and the Fox” by Kelly Link, and Matt de la Peña’s “Angels in the Snow”, Jenny Han’s “Polaris is Where You’ll Find Me” and Stephanie Perkins’ “It’s a Yuletide Miracle, Charlie Brown”.

David Levithan’s story is called “Your Temporary Santa”.

     

The story is about an unnamed narrator who dresses up as Santa Claus as a favor for his boyfriend Connor. The narrator does it out of love for his boyfriend and so that Connor’s little sister Riley will continue to believe in Santa and magic after what we can imagine has been a rough year.

It’s a really short story – 15 pages – but it’s pretty succinct. It feels like a complete story with character development and a, sort of, conflict between the unnamed narrator and…well, really himself. He feels as if he is unwanted, like he doesn’t belong.

I enjoyed this story even though it is somewhat sad. Not all relationships are easy and swoony. Sometimes they are simple, and I don’t mean simple as in easy, but more like unpretentious, not needing to be extravagant and in your face. Sometimes you can just SPOILER get in bed and cuddle and let that be enough.

This story kind of made me feel melancholy even though it’s about Santa and Christmas. Glad it had an uplifting and hopeful ending. Not the best story so far, but not the worst.