Welcome to Day 8 of Blogmas 2025, where I continue subjecting myself and you to daily holiday-themed content through December 25th. For those just joining us, Blogmas is my annual marathon of Christmas posts, and this year I’m letting AI generate the prompts because apparently, I need a digital overseer to keep me creative. Today’s prompt takes us back to fiction: A mall Santa overhears a wish that changes everything. Write the scene.

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The Last Wish of the Season

The Meadowbrook Mall was dying, and Eddie Carpenter knew he was probably watching its last Christmas season. Half the stores were shuttered behind those metal gates that made the place look like a minimum-security prison after hours. The food court was down to three vendors: a Chinese place that hadn’t changed its menu photos since 1997, a pretzel stand, and an Orange Julius that everyone suspected was a front for something.

Eddie sat on his throne in “Santa’s Workshop”—a generous description for the plywood and particle board construction that some ambitious mall employee had built back when Meadowbrook still had ambitions. The workshop facade featured fake wood paneling that was peeling at the corners, a workbench with plastic tools that fooled exactly no one, and a painted window with a view of the “North Pole” that looked more like a nuclear winter than a winter wonderland.

It was Monday, December 8th, 2:30 in the afternoon. The dead zone. Most kids were in school, most adults were at work, and the mall’s primary population consisted of elderly mall walkers and teenagers who were definitely supposed to be in school but had collectively decided that geometry could wait.

Eddie had been sitting there for forty-five minutes without a single visitor. His Santa suit—rented from a costume shop that had helpfully included suspicious stains at no extra charge—was starting to itch. The beard, which attached with elastic bands that cut into his skin behind his ears, had shifted slightly to the left, giving him a lopsided appearance that suggested Santa had suffered a minor stroke.

He was thinking about sneaking a cigarette break when he heard footsteps.

A woman approached with a young boy, maybe six or seven. She looked tired—not regular tired, but that bone-deep exhaustion that comes from carrying weight that isn’t measured in pounds. Hospital bracelets peeked out from under her coat sleeve. The boy was small for his age, wearing a Superman cape over his winter coat and rain boots despite the fact that it hadn’t rained in weeks.

“Is Santa busy?” the mother asked, though she could clearly see Eddie was about as busy as the mall itself.

“Santa’s never too busy for a friend,” Eddie replied, falling into character with the ease of someone who’d been pretending to be other people his whole life. Before this, he’d been a substitute teacher, a telemarketer, a night security guard, and briefly, a man who thought he could make it as a screenwriter in LA. Playing Santa was just another role, another few weeks of pretending that would pay January’s rent.

The boy approached slowly, eyeing Eddie with the suspicion of a child who was right on the edge of not believing anymore. Eddie recognized the look—it was the same expression he’d worn at that age, wanting to believe but starting to notice things like the visible elastic bands and the way Santa’s breath smelled like cigarettes and desperation.

“What’s your name, buddy?” Eddie asked.

“Marcus,” the boy said quietly, still standing a few feet away.

“That’s a strong name. You want to come tell Santa what you’d like for Christmas?”

Marcus looked back at his mother, who nodded encouragingly despite tears threatening at the corners of her eyes. The boy climbed up onto Eddie’s lap, lighter than Eddie expected, fragile as a bird.

“What would you like for Christmas, Marcus?”

The boy was quiet for a moment, then leaned in close, speaking so softly that Eddie had to turn his head to hear.

“I want my mom to stop crying at night when she thinks I’m asleep.”

Eddie’s practiced Santa smile froze. He glanced at the mother, who was looking at her phone, unaware of what her son had just said.

Marcus continued, his voice still barely a whisper. “She cries after she gives me my medicine. She thinks I don’t know, but I do. She cries and says she’s sorry, but she doesn’t need to be sorry. It’s not her fault I’m sick.”

Eddie felt something crack inside his chest, a fault line he’d been ignoring for years suddenly splitting wide open.

“And,” Marcus added, “I want her to know that if I don’t get better, it’s okay. I’m not scared. I dream sometimes that I can fly, really fly, not just pretend. And in the dreams, nothing hurts anymore. So if I have to go fly for real, she shouldn’t be sad forever.”

Eddie’s hands were shaking. This wasn’t in the mall Santa handbook. There was no corporate-approved response for a child essentially asking Santa to prepare his mother for his death.

“Marcus,” Eddie said, his voice catching. “That’s… that’s a very grown-up wish.”

“I know Santa’s not real,” Marcus said matter-of-factly. “I’m not a baby. But Mom wanted to do this, to have a normal Christmas thing. She’s trying really hard to make everything normal.”

Eddie looked at this small boy in a Superman cape, this child who was protecting his mother even as his body was failing him, and made a decision that would change everything.

“You’re right,” Eddie said quietly. “I’m not really Santa. My name is Eddie, and I’m just a guy who needed a job. But you know what? That makes what I’m about to tell you more true, not less.”

Marcus tilted his head, curious.

“Your mom is lucky to have you,” Eddie continued. “Not every kid would be brave enough to worry about their parent when they’re going through something hard. But here’s what you need to know—parents need to cry sometimes. It’s not because they’re weak or because they can’t handle things. It’s because love is so big that sometimes it leaks out as tears. Your mom crying doesn’t mean she’s not strong. It means she loves you so much that her body can’t contain it all.”

Marcus considered this.

“And about the flying,” Eddie said. “I don’t know what happens after… after we’re done here. Nobody really does, no matter what they say. But I think maybe the dreams are practice. Maybe you’re right about the flying. And if that time comes—and it might not, doctors are wrong all the time—but if it does, your mom will be sad for a while. That’s okay too. But she’ll also remember every day she had with you, and eventually, those memories will make her smile more than they make her cry.”

“You promise?” Marcus asked.

Eddie thought about his own son, who he hadn’t seen in three years. Who lived with his ex-wife in Portland and thought his father was a loser who couldn’t hold a job or keep a promise. Who was right about most of that.

“I promise,” Eddie said. “And I promise something else too. I’m going to talk to your mom, okay? Not about what you told me—that’s our secret. But I’m going to make sure she knows that whatever happens, she’s doing a good job. That she’s enough. Can I do that?”

Marcus nodded, then surprised Eddie by hugging him—a real hug, not the performative kind kids usually gave mall Santa. Eddie hugged him back, this strange, brave child in a Superman cape.

When Marcus climbed down, Eddie stood up, something he wasn’t supposed to do—Santa was supposed to stay on the throne. He walked over to the mother.

“Ma’am,” he said quietly, “your son is extraordinary.”

She smiled weakly. “He is, isn’t he? He’s been so brave through all of this…”

“Can I tell you something?” Eddie said, glancing back at Marcus, who was examining the fake tools on the workbench. “I’ve been doing this job for three weeks. I’ve seen hundreds of kids. Your son is the first one who wished for someone else’s happiness. Whatever you’re going through, whatever’s happening, you’re raising a remarkable human being. That doesn’t happen by accident.”

The tears she’d been holding back finally fell. “I don’t feel like I’m doing anything right. I feel like I’m failing him every day.”

“You’re not,” Eddie said firmly. “Trust me. I know what failing a kid looks like. This isn’t it.”

She nodded, wiping her eyes. “Thank you. I mean… thank you, Santa.”

After they left, Eddie sat back on his throne in the empty mall. He pulled out his phone and did something he hadn’t done in three years. He called his son.

“Dad?” The voice was older than Eddie remembered, deeper.

“Hey, buddy. I know it’s been a while. I know I’ve got no right to call out of nowhere. But I wanted to tell you something.”

“Okay…?”

“I’m sorry. For everything. For not being there, for breaking promises, for being the kind of father who disappears. You deserved better. You still do. I don’t know if I can be better, but I want to try. If you’ll let me.”

The silence stretched out so long Eddie thought the call had dropped.

“Dad… are you okay? You sound weird.”

“I’m okay. I’m sitting in a dying mall in Ohio, dressed as Santa Claus, probably about to lose another job, and I just met a kid who reminded me that being brave isn’t about not being scared or sad. It’s about loving people even when everything’s falling apart.”

“That’s… really specific.”

Eddie laughed—a real laugh, maybe his first in months. “Yeah. It is. Listen, I know you probably have a million reasons not to trust me. But I’m going to send you my address. If you want to write, or call, or… anything. I’ll be here. Actually be here this time.”

“Okay,” his son said carefully. “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s more than I deserve. I love you, kiddo.”

“Yeah. Okay. I… bye, Dad.”

After the call ended, Eddie sat in the empty workshop, on his throne that wasn’t a throne, in his suit that fooled no one, in a mall that was dying as surely as that little boy might be. But for the first time in years, he felt like he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

The next day, Eddie arrived to find an envelope tucked under the workshop door addressed to “Eddie (Santa).” Inside was a drawing from Marcus—a picture of Santa flying with Superman. At the bottom, in careful kindergarten handwriting: “Thank you for the secret.”

There was also a note from Marcus’s mother: “He hasn’t stopped talking about the nice Santa who told him the truth. He says you’re a superhero too, just in disguise. Thank you for giving us both what we needed.”

Eddie kept both notes in his wallet. He worked the rest of the season, through the last-minute rushes and the crying toddlers and the teenagers taking ironic photos. On Christmas Eve, when Meadowbrook Mall closed for the last time—another casualty of online shopping and changing times—Eddie helped take down the workshop.

Behind the fake wood paneling, someone had written on the actual wall, probably decades ago: “Magic isn’t what we pretend. It’s what happens when we stop pretending.”

Eddie took a picture of it before they covered it with a drop cloth. He sent it to his son with a message: “Found this behind Santa’s workshop. Made me think of you.”

His son replied an hour later: “Merry Christmas, Dad.”

It wasn’t forgiveness, not yet. It wasn’t fixing everything that was broken. But it was a start. And sometimes, Eddie thought, that’s all any of us can wish for—not a miracle, not a perfect ending, but just a chance to start again.

Marcus was right about one thing: Santa wasn’t real. But the man playing Santa was, and sometimes, that’s enough to change everything.

Even in a dying mall, with a broken throne and plastic tools, where wishes were whispered by children too young to carry such weight—maybe especially there—something real could happen.

Something that looked a lot like magic, if you stopped pretending long enough to see it.