On the day after Thanksgiving, it’s been a tradition that Santa comes in on a shrimp boat, docks at the riverfront, and comes out to say ho ho, what young lady do you want for Christmas? The “tradition” is in fact only 20 or so years old, having started right around the time local shrimping started losing ground to international competition, both wild caught and farmed. Where two dozen shrimp boats a day once left out of Mill Pond, one or two now head out once or twice a week. They come back and sell straight off the boat for $4 a pound to locals on the secret text chains .That’s one third the price at the market down the street, so we’re happy. But it’s the same price as the restaurants can buy off the Sysco truck, head off, cleaned, identically shaped and sized, breaded, ready to drop into the fryer. Those come from a farm in southeast Asia. They are $4 a pound. And so the shrimp boat that Santa came in on today is for show, as are nearly all the shrimp boats now docked at Mill Pond. Picturesque, idle.