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I’ve seen a lot of Spider-Man films in my time, following the web-swinger since the glory days of having director Sam Raimi. So, by now, I have a pretty good sense of what makes a good Spider-Man film. And unfortunately, Spider-Man: Brand New Day isn’t quite what I’d qualify as good, but it comes pretty close. What’s important is the genuinely ambitious idea buried at its center.

Peter Parker and Spider-Man Are Out of Sync

Picking up where No Way Home ended, Peter Parker is now on his own without his Aunt May. But more than that, he’s also without friends, having had Doctor Strange erase his identity from the minds of everyone—including his closest friend, Ned, and girlfriend, MJ—all to save the world. Brand New Day finds our superhero stepping into his own, living a lonely life to protect the people he loves from anyone who might hurt them to get to him — essentially walking in the footsteps of the classic Tobey Maguire Spider-Man.

Brand New Day is ultimately a fresh retread of Spider-Man 2, and it arrives at the same conclusion. The plot is just dressed up differently. Tom Holland’s Peter Parker can’t live the hero’s life alone without help any more than Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker could in 2002. This time, the story still resonates.

In this story, Peter swings into action, fighting villains from Scorpion to Tombstone. When he’s not wearing the mask, he’s thinking about his friends and wishing he could somehow have them back. He even goes so far as to see them at a party they’re hosting. But because he can’t tell them the truth, he goes home sad and torn. He’s in collaboration with the police, which is a departure from that relationship in previous installments.

But as he digs deeper into his loneliness, something strange begins to happen to Spider-Man. He begins to evolve, his spider-sense overloaded and unreliable. His strength also increases, turning him almost into a liability for the police, who are there to help him. His powers are changing in ways he doesn’t fully understand (the trailers suggested this metamorphosis would play a much bigger role than it actually does in the film). There’s a fascinating idea buried here. Peter Parker is trying to live entirely as Spider-Man, attempting to cut himself off from friendship, intimacy, and the ordinary human connections that gave Peter Parker room to breathe. Simultaneously, Spider-Man is physically changing. In other words, the two identities fall out of sync. Peter cannot become whole as Spider-Man while he’s trying to amputate Peter Parker from his life.

To its credit, the film clearly wants the audience to understand this connection between Peter’s need for human relationships and the natural evolution of his identity as Spider-Man. His emotional identity and superhero identity basically need to realign for the problems to cease. The problem is that the movie doesn’t explore the concept deeply enough. Peter’s evolving abilities become complications, as he chooses to fight despite clearly being off his game. His spider-sense is out of wack, and he blacks out in self-defense, entering this beast mode, laying waste to his enemies with heightened precision. These instances of internal conflict that could have been unsettling or revealing are played instead for humor.

This is where Brand New Day falls short of classic status because it’s not what the story needs. The movie knows where Peter needs to go emotionally. It just doesn’t know when to go there or how to get him there for optimal effect. There’s too much screentime given to Peter wanting his friends back. The problem isn’t simply that MJ and Ned are absent from Peter’s life. It’s that Brand New Day relies on the audience feeling their absence when these relationships never got the development they needed in previous installments. Too much of this material falls flat because the movie tells us what Peter has lost without making us feel the magnitude of that loss. It also doesn’t help that the acting from the supporting cast isn’t convincing enough to buy that MJ and Ned don’t remember Peter. The real emotional journey is in Peter’s refusal to accept the sacrifice he made in No Way Home and gradually developing towards acceptance of a future without MJ.

Eventually, the movie gets there. When MJ finally tells Peter that she doesn’t love him, something changes. Peter is finally free to let her go. Had the film established earlier and more painfully that MJ genuinely doesn’t know Peter anymore—that whatever they had really is gone—his eventual acceptance could have landed much harder in this scene near the third act. Peter’s journey would have then had a clearer progression: denial, longing, confrontation, grief, and finally acceptance. The film instead spends too long circling the loss before forcing Peter to face it.

Once it does, though, Peter begins embracing both sides of himself.

A Mystery That Shows Its Hand Too Soon

In some respects, this retreads the path of Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man 2, but it works because Peter Parker and Spider-Man finally stop pulling in opposite directions. His upgraded powers come roaring back into focus. What initially appeared to be a random mutation suddenly feels connected to something more meaningful: Peter becoming whole again. And it’s here that Brand New Day introduces one of its most interesting ideas—and misses one of its biggest opportunities.

Before Peter knows he’s dealing with Jean Grey, he has to figure out what kind of power he’s encountering in the first place. It’s telepathy. But how does it work? What’s its range? Who is using it? Where is it coming from? For a while, Peter doesn’t know. Those questions give Brand New Day all the ingredients for a genuinely compelling superhero mystery. The movie could have made Peter—and us—investigate the phenomenon piece by piece. And this is where the film should have trusted its audience more. The scene between Jean and her sister Sarah at the park should have appeared much earlier in the movie.

Don’t tell us she’s Jean Grey. Don’t explain Sarah is Jean’s sister. Don’t tell us why we’re watching them. Just show us two sisters having a conversation in a park and move on. Let the scene feel out of place. Let it bother us.

Then introduce the strange telepathic activity. Let Peter determine that the power is telepathy. Let him experiment with its range and gradually narrow down what he’s dealing with. Now the audience has information that doesn’t appear to connect yet: a strange scene between two sisters, an unknown telepath, Peter’s increasingly unreliable spider-sense, and Damage Control stepping in to help. Let us piece it together.

Meanwhile, Damage Control should have been written far more convincingly as an organization trying to help Peter. That’s the golden opportunity Brand New Day misses. If Damage Control genuinely appeared to be an uneasy but useful ally, Jean Grey could function as the apparent threat while Damage Control quietly became the real one. Peter—and therefore the audience—could spend much of the movie trying to understand this frightening telepathic presence while believing Damage Control is helping him contain it. And Peter’s spider-sense could have made that deception even better. It shouldn’t scream at him that Damage Control is evil, ruining the mystery. Just give him a tingle. Something small. Someone from Damage Control walks into the room, and Peter pauses. Something feels wrong. Maybe his spider-sense flickers and disappears. Maybe he looks over his shoulder, and there’s nothing there.

Peter knows he can’t completely trust these people. He just doesn’t know why.

That’s an important distinction because Peter Parker shouldn’t be naive. He’s been through too much by this point to blindly trust an organization like Damage Control. But he can make the wrong conclusion from incomplete information. And because his powers are already changing, Peter has every reason to question himself. Is his spider-sense detecting Damage Control? Is Jean’s telepathy interfering with it? Is this another symptom of his metamorphosis? Is the danger coming from somewhere else entirely?

Suddenly, Peter’s evolving abilities aren’t just an inconvenience during action sequences. They’re part of the mystery. Then comes the first reveal, the mysterious telepath is the woman from the park. And Sarah is her sister. That seemingly disconnected scene from earlier in the movie instantly snaps into place.

Oh.

That’s why they showed us that.

That’s the kind of payoff that rewards an audience for paying attention. We weren’t denied the information. We had it all along. We simply didn’t understand what it meant yet. And just when we think we’ve solved the mystery by identifying Jean, the movie could turn the entire thing over again. Jean isn’t the real villain. It’s Damage Control.

Now Peter realizes his spider-sense wasn’t failing him as completely as he thought. It had been warning him all along—just not about the person he assumed it was warning him about. That’s how Jean Grey could have worked brilliantly as a red herring without the movie cheating. The clues were there. Sarah was there. Jean. Damage Control. Peter’s spider-sense. We simply misunderstood how the pieces connected.

Instead of withholding the solution from the audience, Brand New Day could have hidden it in plain sight. And what’s frustrating is how perfectly that structure would fit the larger story. Peter spends this entire movie struggling with perception. He doesn’t understand what’s happening to his powers. He doesn’t completely understand what his spider-sense is telling him. He doesn’t understand Jean. He doesn’t understand Damage Control. And on a much deeper level, he doesn’t yet understand what his life is supposed to look like without MJ and Ned.

Peter’s problem isn’t that he lacks information. It’s that he hasn’t learned how the pieces fit together yet. The audience should have been allowed to experience that with him. That missed opportunity also hurts the eventual Damage Control reveal because instead of making Peter look like someone who sensed the danger but misinterpreted it, he can come across as strangely naive for trusting people he already has plenty of reason not to trust.

The better version preserves Peter’s intelligence. He knows something is wrong. We know something is wrong. Neither of us knows exactly what. That’s suspense.

Unfortunately, Brand New Day too often chooses explanation over discovery.

Jean, herself, still works, particularly once Peter finally confronts her. Don’t expect Xavier to show up in this film, but Peter and Jean’s heart-to-heart steals the show. Peter is uniquely positioned to understand something about Jean that almost nobody else can. Peter’s entire journey as Spider-Man began on the support of Aunt May. For a movie obsessed with including Peter Parker in the Spider-Man hero equation, putting Aunt May next to Jean Grey confronts the scared child underneath the powerful mutant. It’s one of the moments where Brand New Day finally capitalizes on the complexity it has been reaching for throughout the film.

So basically, Brand New Day partially succeeds on an emotional level because it knows where to go emotionally without always knowing when to go there or how. It hits emotional beats that truly matter, as No Way Home did, but fails to structure that depth in a way that fully capitalizes on all the complexity and layers it ambitiously tries to jam into this movie.

Finally, Hulk Feels Like Hulk

Despite the uneven emotional material, the film is considerably more confident when its superheroes are allowed to simply feel superhuman.

And nowhere is that more obvious than with the Hulk. Ironically, this is where previous Marvel films featuring the character have always—and I mean always—failed by comparison. For whatever reason, in this film, Hulk is finally allowed to truly be the Hulk: massive, powerful, and devastatingly strong. He towers over Spider-Man like never before, able to handle massive weights of concrete tied to his feet and throw Peter around like a rag doll. His strength isn’t merely something characters talk about. You feel it.

Where was this Hulk when Thanos was a threat?

His strength and menace are felt here in a way they weren’t in some of the much bigger installments of the MCU.

Spider-Man himself is also finally allowed to show off his powers. His agility and combat strength occasionally make Andrew Garfield’s and even Tobey Maguire’s iterations of Spider-Man feel reserved—except, of course, for the train sequence in Spider-Man 2. That will never be topped.

So credit where credit is due.

Don’t Just This Movie by Its Subtitle

Spider-Man: Brand New Day sounds like a corporate-safe title, but that doesn’t accurately reflect how surprisingly ambitious the film tries to be. This is a movie about loneliness, identity, sacrifice, friendship, perception, and whether Spider-Man can truly exist without Peter Parker. That’s a much more interesting movie than the title suggests.

Unfortunately, its screenplay isn’t always as good as its ideas. The frustrating thing isn’t that Brand New Day lacks interesting pieces. It has almost all of them. Peter’s loneliness. His evolving powers. An unreliable spider-sense. A mysterious telepath. Jean and Sarah. Damage Control. MJ and Ned. Hulk. And, ultimately, Peter’s need to reconcile the man underneath the mask with the superhero swinging above the city.

The pieces are there. The movie just puts too many of them together for us.

A Better Idea Than a Screenplay

Where the film fails to build intrigue, it makes up for it by hitting emotional beats that feel true. Where its relationships aren’t developed deeply enough to make Peter’s loneliness devastating, the underlying idea behind that loneliness remains compelling. And where its screenplay struggles to bring everything together, the third act offers glimpses of the Spider-Man movie Brand New Day could have been from the beginning.

It’s a movie with a better idea than it has a screenplay.

But it’s a pretty good idea.

For my birthday, I want to share something special–a new draft of the summary for my science fiction series, The Eternal Moon. This saga spans twelve books and has been years in the making. For the longest time, I doubted I’d ever finish it–let alone see it published. Only recently have I found real hope that those dreams might actually come true.

This morning, as I cracked open my laptop, many potential topics for today’s post flickered through my mind. But with today being a milestone, I knew I had to return to my Magnum Opus–the sci-fi epic that has tested every ounce of my imagination, persistence, and resolve.

So, here it is:

THE ETERNAL MOON

In history’s final days, the battle between good and evil reaches its fever pitch. Evil makes its last, desperate move – a single gambit that could lock Earth under its rule for eternity. The year is 2965, and the fate of all creation hangs in the balance.

In the sleepless steel labyrinth of Metropolis – Earth’s sprawling capital – orphans Jordan and Jesse scrape by on wit, grit, and sheer will. Survival and friendship have bonded them for life, or so they think. Their lives take an unexpected turn when fate reunites them with their birth families… but rescue isn’t always salvation. Jordan is swept into the opulence and intrigue of the Rushes, a wealthy tech dynasty whose power stretches across the globe, while Jesse returns to the crushing poverty of his working-class parents, where survival demands hard choices. But they quickly discover that both their paths lead to one terrible truth–an ancient, eternal gambit crafted by evil forces as old as time itself–making these days in which they live the last days of human history. As political intrigue closes in and blood ties threaten friendship, their worlds pull them in opposite directions, straining their once seemingly unbreakable bond. In a time when the difference between personal gain and eternal fate is blurred, that which is sacred is now weaponized.

Tonight, I’m feeling pretty good. I just wrote the character profile for a protagonist that has existed in my thoughts for years. He’s a lot like me, taken by grandiose ideas but enjoys working with his hands and appreciates beauty.

Having written over eight hundred words for this character, I find myself on the top of a slope where one inch forward sends me sprinting, then tumbling, down a hill of creativity where the forward momentum is overwhelming, at which point I have no choice but to write – write like a mad man.

Dark Times

It wasn’t always like this, having this growing urge to write the story, unable to stop until it’s finished. For years – many years – I slogged through the creative process, fighting “resistance,” pushing myself to write, despite my mood. It was easier to fight that creativity-sucking mosquito when I was around writer friends. They held me accountable. But just as often as they pushed me to write, they were also visibly frustrated by my apprehension to write characters, to write scenes, to tell a damn story.

They said I had good ideas, and they wanted desperately to read a story by me.

But I was afraid to pull the trigger.

Telling a story meant putting my money where my mouth was because I had often criticized movies and books for not being well written or for being emotionally shallow. Whether my criticisms were sound or well-founded, it didn’t matter, because, ultimately, behind all that was a heavily implied claim that I was a good storyteller.

Character Development

I would later become a great storyteller, able to write short stories on the spot and read them to the nearest open ear in the room, which was often my wife and her family. But to get there, I had to recognize the fact that I had a lot to learn about self-confidence and belief in who I was. The arrogance had to die, and humility had to take its place. Pride had to die for the art to come forth.

The journey was painful at times. Some late nights, alone, in the light of my lamp, with Pad Thai and a coffee to keep me company as I wrote in silence.

Light At the End of the Tunnel

But as it turns out, I don’t function well in silence. I don’t work well alone. When my wife came along, the creativity burst out unexpectedly. Finally, someone who wanted to hear my ideas and was genuinely excited to hear more. She is my ear. My muse.

Her constant encouragement helped shape the creativity that pours out of me today. Now, not only do the ideas pour out but the characters, plot, and world-building do as well.

Get Ready for Awesome

So, I can say with confidence, that beginning next year, as in early January, after New Year’s Day, I will begin chronicling my progress. The goal is to write and finish my novel, The Eternal Moon. Publication will be a battle for another year. For 2025, the battle is to forge the pages of The Eternal Moon in blood with meat and tears.

In 2025, be prepared to plunge into the story of the far future, a Christian science fiction story of epic magnitude similar to Dune and Star Wars. It’s time for good and evil to clash for the last time.

Alright, so, Santa relaxing in September was where we left off. He’s resting before gearing up for the holidays, and he’s living off his stash of silver and gold, which is precisely what would attract the naughty who would want to steal his treasure.

There are a few things this begs to question. Does Old Saint Nick have a way to defend himself? How wrong could things go? Whom can Santa call on for help? And we’ll answer them in that order.

Santa carries around an umbrella, a tool he can offer others and defend himself with. Of course, it’s a magic umbrella, capable of surprising anyone who uses it or gets hit with it.

No matter how careful Santa tries to be, someone’s bound to notice his uncommon form of payment and want more where it came from. Something he cannot avoid is paying someone on the naughty list for passage somewhere.

Entranced by the precious metals in their hand, the naughty one, with street smarts to boot, takes mental note of Santa’s defining feature, his eyes. They are the eyes of a saint, warm and welcoming, and leaving a lasting impression on anyone who comes in contact, though they don’t know it.

One Saturday, having chosen a different AirB and B in the back country, as he has for the first three Saturdays, Santa settles in for a quiet day inside, Christmas songs on his heart, a Safeway box of sweet and sour chicken stabbed with chopsticks on the table, and a stack of wood in the fireplace ready to catch flame.

The latched door is pried open with a crowbar and kicked in. The naughty figure stands tall in the doorway, cold air blowing in from outside. Santa remains sitting, unfazed. He’s known this man since his first letter, which asked that his dad come home from the war for Christmas.

As Santa purses his lips at the encounter, the imposing figure, wearing leather gloves, grips his crowbar and points it at Santa’s leather stash of silver and gold. Santa slowly shakes his head, unfazed by the razor’s edge upon which the moment hangs.

The figure steps inside and closes the door with a slow creak. Santa sighs. The figure walks over to Santa, his steps measured for instilling terror in his victim. As he looms over the old man sitting in his chair, Santa shakes his head.

That leather grip on the crowbar tightens with silent rage, but the thief sidesteps Santa in his seat and goes for the bag of silver and gold, opening the sack to see the coins glittering from the ceiling light. A shadowy grin appears on the thief’s face as he chokes the bag closed and stands up, only to turn around and see Santa standing before him, making eye contact at his level. He too has a imposing presence, his red suit somehow giving him a transcendent presence.

Where everything changes is in Santa’s eyes. They tell the thief’s entire life’s story in one look. How he’s become this thief, who helped him along, and how Santa feels about it, compassionate but furious. Most powerful though is how he feels in Santa’s eyes: small.

The sack hits the floor with a sharp, metal thud, and the thief raises the crowbar to a striking pose. Santa’s eyes remain locked on his, unchanged.

With time standing still, the thief lowers the crowbar, having lost the upper hand, having felt exposed and disarmed. No one had looked at him before, stared at the monster within, only to show compassion and outrage.

The figure walks passed Santa and heads for the door before he felt a sharp pain against his temple and blacked out, Santa towering over him with his umbrella.

With the man on the floor, out like a light, Santa sits back down to enjoy his now-cold sweet and sour chicken, the fire in full blaze. He’s just not in the mood for Christmas songs anymore. But the rest of the year – and the naughty list – press on him with urgency and empathy.

It’s almost October, and he’s still got plenty of silver and gold to last him the ferry ride home. Iceland will be his last stop.

Here’s a short story you’ve never read before.

I sipped a hot cup of cocoa, reclined in my chair near a fire, on Christmas Eve. Christmas dinner was in the works with the wife and father-in-law busy around the sink and stove. Between the first sip and last sip of my cocoa, I wrote an idea with only my phone.

Premise: What is Santa Clause up to in September?

Though Santa’s busy hours happen at the North Pole, not much is known in the myth about how he spends the whole year leading up to Christmas Eve. How does he spend his time between January and November? Is there something that occupies his attention?

Well, yes. Santa has to know who’s naughty and nice. To know that, he must be among us. He can’t just know it magically. I don’t buy it. He’s on the ground, in our midst.

And he’s not alone. He’s checking in on the extra naughty and the extra nice, but the elves, his little workers, are covering more ground than he can alone. It’s a special elf division, the elite – Alpha Squad. The rest are at the North Pole, syncing the data collected from Alpha with the gifting department, readying materials for the Gift Wrap department.

So, while Alpha Squad covers the cities, streets, neighborhoods, and farmland across the world in logistical fashion in keeping with thousands of years of experience, Santa moves methodically and carefully to specific areas around the world where the extra naughty and the extra nice live.

Santa and Alpha Squad have done this before, many times, so it’s all mostly routine, with the exception of Santa’s route. Thankfully, Elf Command, located in the North Pole, can anticipate the route for Santa months in advance with the Joy Reader, an advanced scanner that tracks the pulse of the Christmas Spirit. To the untrained eye, the scanner looks like a bunch of colored lines weaving in and out of an intricate thread pattern waving up and down with the day. But the elves, they’ve got the trained eye and the spectacles to prove it, which exaggerate the size of their eyes, as they jot notes on silver wrapping paper, covering it in rigorous notes. They’ve proven the accuracy of their skilled analysis, year over year, century over century.

The only thing that makes their eyes bug out a little is when Santa brings home the data from his trip, a neat, red-leather-bound booklet of finely written notes colored in gold about the many extra naughty and extra nice children he encountered. The elves can only project Santa’s path based on hot spots; they can’t assess each child – the data Santa collected from being up close and personal frustrates the elves only a little, as the numbers require big adjustments in sections where they must zoom in ten times and find the right child to adjust their naughty-nice profile. It’s tedious but necessary. Some elves think if all children could just fall into the Average Naughty Nice metric, it’d make their jobs much easier. But these elves made a club, “The Elves of Analysis.” They take their tasks seriously, no matter the demands. Have faith, Santa! There’s nothing analysis can’t clear up. The annual report that Santa doesn’t just check once but twice will be ready before Christmas Eve, or they’re not pointy-eared and drunk with cocoa.

So, that’s how the year generally looks for Santa, broadly speaking. But what about up close? What if we could see what Santa does in September, specifically?

When Santa leaves the North Pole, having done his mythical Christmas Eve run, he’s kissed Mrs. Clause goodbye and sets off on his journey, which requires a descent from the immortal snowy land of the North Pole to the wet, dry, hot, rainy, and misty lands of the mortals.

It’s not that he doesn’t like to travel. It’s just that he’s naturally a homebody. But he craves adventure nonetheless. He can relate to celebrities wearing sunglasses when on the streets of LA. His slay stays behind. Instead, he boards a special elvish transport bound for one of a dozen remote locations around the globe, each selected on a different year to avoid being followed by locals.

To ease himself into the noise and hyperactivity of man’s busy society, he’s dropped off on the outskirts where it’s slow and quiet, wearing rugged attire and a sack hung over his shoulder. To any onlookers, he’s no different than a white-bearded hitchhiker with a surprisingly warm smile and a stride supported by a humble walking stick.

A red velvet pouch jingles with each step he takes. It contains both gold and silver, minted by the magic of the elves. Each coin has the engraving of the North Pole Christmas Tree symbol, with the initials SC enlarged in the background. Santa initially objected to such an overt hint to his identity when he’s incognito, but the Mint elves thought it’d be funny to put something so obvious onto the coin, confident no human would ever figure it out. Besides, they say, there’s an entire minting industry on Earth that makes different designs all the time. Santa’s minted coins would just blend right in.

Santa doesn’t carry paper money on his travels. The North Pole has always leaned on gold and silver for currency, whether it’s for Santa’s journey to the mortal world or to run the Workshop economy, which spans thousands of elf-sized homes and workshops stretching for hundreds of miles. Santa’s never had to worry about such a large operation being found by humans. Air traffic is rare, almost non-existent, and the magical atmosphere only shows up on their scanners like a red blob. Plains can’t land to investigate, and the human intelligence and military operations apparatus doesn’t have enough intel to justify a multi-billion-dollar operation to investigate. But the Elf Intelligence Center (or EIC) is always one step ahead of human intelligence agencies.

Basically, ever since the US presidents started operating on fiat currency, Santa has been able to enjoy his love of gold and silver by customizing the inventory of his purse based on the changing spot price of the two metals. He likes the sound and feel of the coins. And he likes to share it with those who’d benefit from his generousity, even though the nice list isn’t yet printed. Gold and silver have been the staples of Santa’s legacy since he took over from his predecessor around the planting of the American colonies.

He’s lived a lot of human history, and he’s observed many lifetimes of it, which is why on his travels he’s not out of element. Just the opposite, he knows the streets, the towns, the roads, having seen their previous iterations through time. Some places never change, while other places change radically. Thankfully, the digital age hasn’t taken hold yet; it’s still in its infant stage.

Which means children can still manage. Being nice in an increasingly digital age will only become more difficult, which will mean a disproportionit shift to the naughty list. But that’s not something he can control. He’s here to remind the children why they shouldn’t shout, pout or cry, why treating each week like Christmas is essential to get on the nice list.

Christmas comes but once a year. That’s a long time for a child to be nice.

So, Santa strolls through their neighborhood with a skip in his step and cheeks full of jolly cheer, wearing festive jeans and a shirt, maybe a hat and a jacket. Any time he’s “in need of directions” – any time he might need a hand changing a tire – the nearest kid who is almost naughty has a chance to show Santa they have the good to be a little more nice. Sometimes, he’s so inspired by a spark of Christmas spirit, he tosses them a silver coin as a visual reminder of the brightness they’ve shown him.

He doesn’t just gift silver to children. Sometimes it’s adults, too. The rare ones who have protected the Christmas spirit, despite the transition to adulthood. They are few, but they are out there. For those who have just a shred of Christmas spirit in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond, the ounces of silver and gold remind them that the generosity of a stranger is still alive and beauty shines through this dark world. This combination of the two, by Santa’s estimates, boosts the Christmas spirit in hard-working adults.

Santa needs time to rest after walking, driving, and flying around the world, the weight of this hard world heavy on his Christmas spirit. Binging movies on Netflix isn’t his idea of rest, especially Christmas movies. They never get it right. He doesn’t nap either. His exhaustion needs a deeper remedy. Millions of the naughty weigh on him.

To rest, he sings songs, eats sweet and sour chicken, while sitting by a fire with his sore soles warming up, on four Saturdays in September, made possible by magic.

Depending on how well he covered his tracks, Santa can relax. But not every year is he not visited by an unwelcome guest. Sometimes, the unwanted visitor is a repeat offender on the naughty list with lifetime status and not someone he’d ever give any silver, for their hearts are more than naughty. They’re malicious.

To be continued by Santa in September Part II.