By a narrow margin, today Seattle became the first city in the country to approve ranked-choice Christmas gift list legislation.
“You used to have to go all-or-nothing with your top Christmas list choice,” said 11-year-old Michael as he got ready for bed on-time tonight. “Do you go all in and make Mom feel like the only way to make Christmas morning okay is if she gets me a Sony Playstation 5 no matter how expensive and hard to get, all the while risking she votes instead on going a completely separate way with the gifts—socks, shirts, God forbid a jacket you didn’t get to pick out and have to wear for the next two years? Or do I go with the safer request for a Nintendo Switch or a bike, all the while resentful I couldn’t even ask for what I really wanted? Should me and my brother ask for the same console to make sure we get it? Now I can ask for all of those ranked options without seeming like as much of an immature, stubborn little shit.”
Proponents of ranked-choice Christmas gift listing say it also reduces the chances that fringe Santa’s elves give gifts that almost no one else asked for.
“This new way of doing things reduces the chances some weird fringe of Santa’s elves all of a sudden throwing in something neither you or your mom wanted in the house like a pogo stick, or some weird Dr. Seuss shit like jing-tinglers or gardinkers,” said ranked-choice Christmas list advocate Laura Packard. “It also greatly increases Christmas listing rates because people feel like their true preferences have a chance to be heard and made reality without putting everyone is as much of a bind.”
Because the new legislation doesn’t go into effect until 2027, in the meantime this year all local children are being asked to choose between a Nintendo Switch Lite or a giant orange block of Velveeta cheese.
