This is Object. I'm Farron Gibson. I hand-wrote a letter this past summer, but before that, I probably haven't written one since grade school. Feels like a fading medium, but if there's one place it's holding strong, it's gotta be letters to Santa. What's fascinating from an archival perspective is that these messages act like tiny time capsules, giving us glimpses into what kids were thinking over the years, especially when it comes to changing tastes in toys. In the 1970s, you're getting all these requests for the Cindy doll, which was a British fashion doll, the equivalent of the Barbie. Nobody was asking for Barbie. It was all Cindy, Cindy, Cindy and Cindy's accessories and Cindy's friends. And then you get to the 1980s and all of a sudden it's Barbie, Barbie, Barbie. That's Carrie Holbrook, a lecturer in history and folklore at the University of Hertfordshire. The girls, you're seeing a big change where they're asking for toys and dolls and games. And then in the 1970s, they're asking for miniskirts and makeup and jewelry. And suddenly there's this shift in how girls are wanting to present themselves and the rise of the tween. You could see the requests from children, how they grow over time. It really tracks with the commercialization of Christmas. You know, Christmas gifts used to be just little handmade things or little treats, even like an apple, like very simple things. And it grew into store-bought items to... Fighting over a tickle me Elmo. Right. It gets to that state. Yeah. Yeah. That's Alex Palmer. He's a writer and author of the book, The Santa Claus Man, who we'll be hearing more about later. Over the course of this episode, we'll dig into the world of Santa letters, what children actually wrote, how they sent off their magical messes, and what became of them once they reached real destinations. The earliest references to Letters to Father Christmas aren't actually letters themselves. They're just brief references in newspapers that seem to suggest it was fairly common practice by the 19th century, where they're describing post offices being inundated with letters written to Santa Claus or Father Christmas. Occasionally they will reprint a letter. They would urge children to send in their letters and parents would drop in their letter to the New York Tribune or any given newspaper. So you have a lot of coverage kind of toward the end of the 19th century. And sometimes people might even respond. They would occasionally include addresses that people could reply to. Newspapers are a great place to see reproduced copies of children's letters and get a sense of their content. But some original letters have turned up in a surprising spot in Holmes. The earliest physical letters that we still have today come from the early 20th century, back when children were putting their letters up chimney breasts in the belief that some magic would then transport the letter to Santa Claus. And those letters, in some cases, were left there. I believe that Santa came down the chimney, you can trace it back to Dutch folklore, but it seems to have entered at least Britain in the 19th century. The chimney has a very, very long history of being an access point for supernatural characters. Earlier in the 19th century, this was seen as quite threatening. So a witch or a demon could access your home through the chimney. So you would put protective objects up the chimney to ward the moth. So it's interesting that by the 19th century, you're getting a reversal and actually you're welcoming the supernatural character in. There is this great fear if you don't have an open chimney that Santa won't be able to make it into your home. So lots of letters say things like, we don't have a fireplace anymore, so please come through the front door. If we look back at some Dutch and Flemish paintings from the 17th century, we get a sense of the fireplace as a place of enchantment. In the painting Witch's Sabbath from 1606, artist Franz Franken the Younger shows a mad scene with spell casting, potion mixing, and magical implements strewn all around the room. In the background, the fireplace is marked with carved symbols and figures are shown flying up the chimney. Jan Steen offers a very different scene in a later painting, The Feast of St. Nicholas. Here, the hearth becomes the center of a family drama, with seven children reacting to the morning's discoveries. One child, perhaps on the naughty list, cries while his elder sister holds up his empty shoe and laughs. Any gifts should have been placed there the previous night. Meanwhile, his younger sister hugs a doll of John the Baptist and a bucket of goodies that she received. Off to the right, two other siblings peer up the fireplace as if hoping to catch a glimpse of St. Nicholas. In the UK, a few of these letters have been discovered hidden in old chimneys during renovations, serving as little artefacts of a cute and quirky tradition. So 1925 was one example from Eastbourne in the UK where a child was asking for a box of soldiers, a book and handkerchiefs. So quite different things to what children are asking for today. In the 1930s, one found up a chimney breast in Powys, Wales from a five-year-old girl who was asking for a hymn book, amongst other things. And then one of my favorites from the 1960s, found by a chimney sweep in Nottinghamshire. It's your standard letter to Father Christmas in that the child's asking for a cowboy suit, guns and a hat. But it's marked urgent, capital letters, underlined, exclamation mark. And I just love the idea that this child really urgently needed that cowboy suit. These days we think about what little ones are writing to Santa, but these letters actually began with messages coming from the other direction. Often it was parents writing to children in the voice of Santa, kind of a moral guidance that they would be providing to them. Like if you're good this year, so I'm giving you this little token. And then children would then start writing back over the subsequent decades. So a lot of these letter writers are very concerned about expressing how good they've been or almost in the manner of confession, kind of admitting, well, they did that one thing wrong. And sometimes they will give details, but they will always say, but I've been trying my hardest or mommy and daddy say that I've been good. Therefore, I deserve gifts. There are also instances of I know the Manchester way of saying this but I not sure for your listeners but for kind of dobbing somebody in or grassing somebody up Like telling on someone Yeah telling on someone You saying such a person didn do very well this year so maybe don't give them a present. One of my favorite examples, I'll just quote it. This was from 1970s Sheffield in Yorkshire. A girl wrote, Dear Santa Claus, do not give my friend anything for Christmas because she is not nice no more. And I just think it's brilliant that kind of, you know, there is this thing that you can, And, you know, you have to prove, you have to prove. Yeah, that's some deep hate right there for your friend. Oh, I know, I know. Very vindictive, very vindictive. There's a real mix of things going into the letters, aside from asserting good behavior. What are the kids asking for? What are they thinking about? What are they worrying about? Earlier on, maybe they would ask for one or two things, often quite small things. But they're also curious about Santa Claus. They do ask questions about where he lives. By the second half of the 19th century, it was fairly well established that Santa was in the North Pole. So they would be asking, how's the North Pole? Is it cold up there? Will you be able to get here in the snow? How are the reindeer doing? Often it is a family member who's helping the child to write the letter. Sometimes the parent has written it themselves because it'll say something like, Timmy is two, so I'm writing this letter for him. Other cases, you get evidence of an adult having maybe drafted an earlier version of the letter and left gaps for the child to fill in what they want. Or an adult maybe having kind of crossed out a spelling mistake or added certain kind of polite pleasantries to a letter. Teaching children not just how to spell, but also how to write a polite letter. So you can see these being used as pedagogical devices. They're being used to teach as well as for the magic of it. And then you get these individual snippets of the food that people are leaving out for Santa on Christmas Eve. You leave Santa offerings, and that's essentially what they are. They are kind of votive offerings in that they are items left for a supernatural being who will give you something in return. That's what a votive offering is. They're leaving these objects on the mantelpieces or the half stone or the coffee table. And they show this gradual homogenization, in Britain at least. The mince pie becomes more and more common, along with a glass of sherry and carrots for the reindeer. But you're also seeing cakes, sandwiches, apples if Santa wants to be healthy, things like cocoa or coffee to keep him warm. They'll leave out beer and brandy, but they hope that he doesn't get too drunk because it will stop him from delivering all the presents. You have to wonder how much of this is the parents' preference for the evening, right? What do I fancy tonight? Absolutely. There is a brilliant one from Sheffield, Yorkshire, where one child says, and I'm quoting, my daddy says that we've got to leave you a bottle of beer again and some peanuts. And I'm sure, I'm sure their daddy did tell them that. So, yeah, the parents' preferences definitely coming through in these letters. When I was reading this in the archive, I burst out laughing and everybody looked at me. But it's just, it's so brilliant. So this was 1980s and this was a girl and she wrote, Dear Santa, last year you did not leave me anything so good. The year before that, you did not leave me anything so good. This is your last chance. What's waiting for Santa? What is she going to do? It's quite a worrying example. The letters themselves are also full of character. From carefully chosen stationery to improvised scraps of paper, they are all unique. The children are using a wide range of stationery that are quite personalized. sometimes it's with images from their favorite film on it sometimes it's a christmas card that they're choosing to write in sometimes they've adorned it with stickers other times you can see where a child maybe had less access to stationery and they've written their letter on the back of an envelope or on a napkin or something you know they've used whatever scrap bit of paper they can find a real shift in the story of these letters comes once the postal systems in the uk and us begin to open up in the 19th century. Suddenly, children aren't limited to reaching Santa through notes left on a table or up a chimney. There's an organized infrastructure they can use. As the mail becomes more widely accessible, those magical letters start entering a system that was never designed for them. It is in the 19th century when you start to get a lot of letters being sent by post. It seems to have happened at different times across Europe and America. In the UK, at least, it dates to the mid-19th century. I think that might have something to do with the 1840 postal reform. So from 1840 onwards, post was standardised at a low fixed price. So it became much more accessible for everyone. Whereas before 1840, it was really only the wealthy, or in the case of an urgent message that the post would be used. The post offices suddenly become inundated with all these letters that they don't really know where to send them or what to do with them because they're quite vague. They're addressed to Santa Claus or Father Christmas. People were sending letters to the North Pole, to Iceland, to the cloud in the sky. So you can see a wide range of addresses that it goes to. And unfortunately, it's hard for the Postal Service to have delivered to any of those addresses. These letters were ending up at the dead letter office in the United States for mail that was undeliverable or to a character that could not actually receive mail. And this was hundreds, thousands of letters that were starting to accumulate this way. They would go there and be held for a bit and then get destroyed. Oslo had a sorting office that was just there to tackle the massive letters that they were receiving. Various archives across Norway have collections of English language letters. But I think every country has its own. There's a town in the U.S. that receives a lot of letters to to Santa Claus and they have their own archives there. Finland get a lot, Iceland get a lot. And then in the UK, if you address something to Santa, it tends to go to a particular Royal Mail site where they will send back a standardized letter. There were a few interventions, both in Europe and America where charities would be set up and they would gather the letters And then if there were ones that were particularly needy they would try to meet those requests The newspapers again kind of took up the call of something should be done about this. This is such a shame. And they were doing their part to publish these letters and try to get attention to them. But the rules were the rules at the U.S. Postal Service. And they didn't really have a way of answering the letters. Finally, there was enough pressure that was put on from the media and from others on the U.S. Postal Service to do something about it. And so they actually adjusted their rules in 1913, where they said if a local person or organization wants to take on the responsibility of these letters, they're welcome to do it. They just need to put their hand up and get the official approval of their local postmaster, and then they are welcome to it. And a few cities did do it. A couple different organizations, a few individuals, just different charities, things like that. In New York in 1913, nobody actually volunteered, and the newspapers covered that, that, you know, this is sad that we don't have a Santa Claus in New York City. So a enterprising public relations man named John Gluck saw this opportunity and said, well, next year I'm going to be Santa Claus for New York City. He put himself forward as an organization, what he called the Santa Claus Association. He said that he was the head of the Santa Claus Association and that he had this whole organization that could respond to these letters and would tap a wide range of resources to be able to play the role of Santa Claus for the city. He really had a lot of experience in public relations. He had put on a number of events. Just the summer prior to when he launched the Santa Claus Association, he actually had a big bullfight in Coney Island, promoted as the first bullfight in the United States that ended up turning into a disaster. But he knew how to grab headlines, was a bit of a showman and really good at getting the media to talk about some whatever his whether it was a client or his own project that he was trying to get attention for. And he really saw this as a great opportunity to strike an emotional chord. It actually goes great when he first launches it. He used the concept of what we'd call crowdsourcing now. The headquarters was in the back of a New York City chop house of a friend of his who would go on to oversee Keene's chop house, which is still a beloved institution in New York. He got a few rooms in the back of the steakhouse he could use and a number of volunteers, a lot of women and even Boy Scouts that were helping to get the letters. And there was a whole process of logging them. And first step was sending a letter back from Santa. So they created these adorable form letters that were from Santa himself. So no matter what, every letter would at least get this response. But then the real genius was to give citizens of New York the opportunity to answer the letters themselves. He put out the call, used the newspapers and radio to let people know that Santa Claus letters were available if they wanted to answer them. A New Yorker could come to the organization's headquarters, get a few letters, and then get the gifts, send them to the child, or even deliver them in person. So there ended up being some great stories in the paper of these society ladies who got the letter from some kid in uptown that just wanted a doll for their Christmas gift, and she would go up personally and bring it to them. So it was this fascinating class tension, as you were saying. One of the things Gluck really promoted about it was there wasn't a lot of overhead. This was space that they weren't having to pay rent on. It was volunteers that were doing it and volunteers that were buying the guests, just local New Yorkers. He wasn't taking a salary. So it was really Christmas spirit that was underwriting the whole operation. At first, Gluck seems like an audacious but well-meaning figure eager to help needy children. But as the Santa Claus Association grew, so too did his list of requests for financial support. Digging through the New York Times archives, I found several articles on the association, including pieces detailing its fundraising activities. They offered a glimpse into what Gluck stood to gain personally from the venture, beyond the glow of spreading Christmas cheer. The first year that the group ran, there was a big profile on him in the New York Times. It seemed like he just loved being able to be the center of attention like this and be able to not only do something good, but also have people talking about all the good things he was doing. One of the other things he was gaining from it was contact with business leaders. A lot of people wanted to be involved in this project, and Gluck was reaching out to heads of companies and prominent figures and asking if they wanted to help out. And a lot of them also enjoyed having their names associated with the organization in the newspapers. As one year went to the next, he started asking other leaders if they wanted to be involved. And sometimes if he didn't get a response back, would add them as an honorary vice president to the long list of honorary vice presidents in the organization. And started abusing that approach where he would start just sending letters off to prominent figures and just including their names in the list. I mean, that worked pretty well for the most part for the first few years, but they started to get pushback from some organizations and individuals who were not happy about the fact that they were being connected to this organization they knew nothing about. Even as some concerns were coming up, there were plenty of positive headlines. He was getting some of the major silent film stars of the day posing for promotions for the group. There were benefit performances with the funds going to pay for the postage. Politicians were voicing their support. The city mayor, even the governor, Al Smith, would write a little endorsement of the group. They would release these yearbooks every year of all their vice presidents and leaders. And along with these yearbooks, they would also be packed with ads from toy makers and shops promoting their Christmas gifts. So this is also an advertising opportunity for fundraising as well. He at first would ask for some fundraising and assistance to pay for the two cent stamps that they would need to use to send those letters from Santa Claus to the children But then the asks seemed to grow Then it started saying well we need to pay for not only the stamps but for the office supplies and these other things. They moved from the back of the steakhouse for one year. The next year they moved to the Hotel Aster. This big, beautiful rat skeller, they have this sort of basement area that just was really stunning. They called it the Santa Claus Cave, where they had their whole organization down there. And then from there, in its third year, they moved to the Woolworth Building, which at the time was the tallest building in the world. At the end of their 1915 season, when the newspaper reports had given them a lot of attention, but maybe hadn't been quite as effusive as they had been during the Santa Claus Association's first couple years, he announced that they were going to be creating a Santa Claus building in the middle of New York City. He had all these plans that he'd worked out with one of the top architects of the time. And it would be not only the headquarters for the Santa Claus Association, but they were going to have a massive toy store and there would be all the city's charities. Many of them would be headquartered there as well, particularly those that help kids and also a research center to help understanding poverty and overcoming these public policy challenges. They just needed to raise $300,000 to be able to do that. He was putting out a call to all the parents of the world to donate their money to help realize this beautiful new monument to the Christmas spirit. Not much more was heard after that, once that announcement was made, but there wasn't a lot of follow-up as far as, is this happening? What's going on with it? So that was one of the more obvious moments where something was amiss with this group, but largely because of where charity was at at the time in New York City and elsewhere throughout the country, there wasn't a lot of oversight to charities anyway. It was easy for Gluck to kind of slide under the radar because of that. Gluck and the Association's luck ran out with the arrival of Bird S. Kohler as New York's public welfare commissioner. Kohler wasn't just another official. He had already served as New York City's first comptroller and as Brooklyn Borough president. By the time he became commissioner of public welfare, he had a long track record in city politics and a keen eye for the city's shadier dealings. It didn't take long before the Santa Claus Association found itself in his sights. When he stepped into the role, one of his goals was to get oversight of these charities and to hold them to account. He shut down a number of organizations and he went after the Santa Claus Association. It took him a couple years. He actually ended up encountering Gluck in a couple other ways. As Gluck had found success with the Santa Claus Association. He started a number of other organizations throughout the year, beyond the holidays, the most prominent of which was this answer to the Boy Scouts of America. It was this organization he called the U.S. Boy Scout. And that raised the ire of the Boy Scouts of America and its leaders. They went after the U.S. Boy Scout. And that exposed a lot of what Cluck was doing around charities, you know, adding people as honorary vice presidents and asking for funds. So Berg Kohler went after Gluck and this U.S. Boy Scout organization ended up shutting it down. But something about that holiday connection, it took a few more years before the scrutiny that was being put on a lot of other charity organizations would then be put on this Santa Claus Association. Eventually, Kohler brought the Santa Claus Association to an end by having the Postal Service cut off its access to the letters. Gluck tried to continue by having the letters sent directly to the association, but without the U.S. Postal Service backing, he could never match his earlier reach. Fortunately, the charitable work that first inspired the association didn't end with a clock. Because of this was such a high-profile scandal and created so many headaches for the Postal Service, they said from that point they would handle any of the letters. So that's when Operation Santa Claus launched. It took a couple years for it to really get going, But Operation Santa is still a functioning organization and in New York City, quite vibrant. It exists in a few other cities and it's basically run by the U.S. Postal Service. And that's thanks to Gluck's shenanigans. Even through all of the controversy, the association did manage to do some good for children in the city. In a 1915 letter to the New York Times, Gluck wrote, This is a material age, but don't you think it's a good thing to try and preserve, as long as possible, the children's faith in the unknown? in their belief that once a year, someone whom they never see will answer their prayers. I think it's sweet to think of the letters as little prayers of hope and to know that some of them did get answered. There are funny ones, there are sweet ones, there are sad ones, but they really give an insight into the very, very broad spectrum of children's lives over the years. Looking back over the episodes in this miniseries, a few things stand out. Print media played a big role in spreading both images and traditions, shaping how people thought about the holidays. You can also see class differences, different income groups engaged with customs in different ways, and that merges and shifts with social and economic changes over time. What we find is that what might seem like childhood whimsy or domestic decoration is actually a lens on society, economy, and culture, showing how even gestures like a letter to Santa can reflect broader currents in history. Thank you to my guests, Carrie Holbrook and Alex Palmer. For listeners interested in a history of British folklore and rituals, I recommend Carrie's book, Folklore. and be sure to grab a copy of Alex's The Santa Claus Man for a full story on John Gluck and the Santa Claus Association. This episode was written and produced by me, Farron Gibson, and the music was produced by Tom Lloyd. Find me on Instagram at Farron Gibson and keep up with this podcast and other stories at object.substack.com. This closes out our Xmas Files miniseries, but more topics and series are on the way, So make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a thing. I'll see you in the next series.
