The Casebook of Justice and Dixon.

The Case of the North Pole Gang, Part 1.

The name is Justice. Jack Justice.

December is the cruelest month, my friends.

There are certain persons who shall remain T.S. Eliot who would have you believe otherwise,

citing lilacs and an earth emerging from forgetful snow,

and other arguments in favor of other pages of the word-a-day calendar

which I had spent the past 11 months barely tolerating.

It would do you well to remember that the same argumentative poet spent a measurable number of his days writing poems about cats with stupid names,

which makes him objectively wrong about everything, especially this.

December is the cruelest month.

This is not a point on which I am prepared to yield the slightest ground.

There is no other month which even begins to propose that peace on earth and goodwill toward men

is even a remote possibility, much less that it is something that might be wished for by a small child

trying to ingratiate themselves in a letter to an overweight immortal man who lives with elves.

No month could live up to those kind of expectations, and the cruelest month does not even try.

I hear you wonder to one another what could have provoked this position.

After all, cruel months like December do not apply their cruelty evenly.

That would be fair, and fairness is inherently antithetical to the signature

trait of this particular month, see cruelty above.

Those who are lost, adrift or alone, feel the pangs of despised love more keenly than others,

and it cannot be argued that I am any of those things.

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