Writing Letters to Santa
Every year thousands of children write letters to Santa Claus to request the presents they want to receive from the fabled North Pole resident, and in the United States, those letters are often dropped in a real mailbox. But how did that tradition start?
Some of the earliest Christmas correspondence wasn’t actually written to Santa, but rather from him. In the first half of the 19th Century, Santa Claus was more of a disciplinary figure than the jolly old fellow who sorts “naughty” from “nice” these days. Stories of Saint Nicholas were meant to encourage children to behave, and some parents even wrote letters “from” Santa Claus to their children discussing their conduct over the previous year, mischievous or obedient.
In 1879, Thomas Nast created the first known image of someone using the U.S. mail system to write to Santa Claus. In this Harper’s illustration, a youthful figure puts a letter addressed to “St. Claus North Pole” in a mailbox on a snowy evening.
At that point, however, the mail system was already being used for letters to Santa. On Boxing Day 1874, for example, the New York Times included an item about letters “deposited in the Richmond Post Office, evidently written by children, plainly indicated that they, anticipating the annual visit of Santa Claus, wished to remind him of what they most desired.” The Times quoted a few letters: one requested “a big wagon—not so very big—four wheels, two packs pop-crackers, a Mother Hubbard book.”