Writing Letters to Santa

By the 1880s, the practice of writing a letter to Santa Claus had become popular among American children. And while this was great for the little boys and girls of the Country, the increasing number of letters being sent during the holidays put a much greater strain on the U.S. Postal Service.  

^ Local postal workers (Richard Gruetzmacher depicted here doing parcel delivery between 1913 and 1916) were already burdened by the demands of holiday postal delivery without letters to Santa during the winter months.But many did their best to keep the holiday spirit alive whenever possible.

The main complication was that Santa did not exactly have a public address or P.O. Box. And so when writing their letters, the kids often made up cute addresses like “The Land of Snow, North Pole” or “Christmasville, Joyland.” But while these were imaginative, the U.S. Postal Service was not exactly set up to accommodate these fictional addresses. And so any letters addressed to "Santa Claus" or any other undeliverable locations were sent to the “dead letter department,” where they were either returned to sender or  destroyed. Eventually, charitable organizations were given permission to take these letters to Santa, especially to help provide presents to neediest among the writers, but this option would not be officially solidified in U.S. Postal Service policy until 1913.¹

SANTA CLAUS LETTERS

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Petitions to Santa Claus for Christmas Presents From Little Ones Are Printed Today.

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The Record-Herald prints today a few "Santa Claus" letters, which have been received in the past few days,  telling of the desires of some of Wausau's little ones. Letters addressed to "Santa Claus," which are intended for the Record-Herald should be addressed in care of the paper as all letters merely addressed to "Santa Claus," whether or not they are stamped will be sent direct to the dead letter office.

^​In the meantime, groups like the Wausau Record-Herald offered to publish letters to Santa for local children. At some point, a more creative explanation for why children should send their letters to the newspaper was thought up. As it turns out, Santa was himself a reader of the Wausau Record-Herald. And while you could not always count on letters finding Saint Nick directly though the mail, you could be sure that he would ready any letters published directly in the newspaper.

The mail men are beginning to find the little letters addressed to the North Pole and are bringing them to the Record-Herald office so that when Santa, after a busy day, sits down to enjoy his evening paper, he will surely see them.

-"Santa Gets His First Letters", Wausau Record-Herald (5 December, 1919).

The Letters

And so, it became a tradition for these letters to be transcribed and published each December in the Wausau Record-Herald (often with spelling errors intact).

In the early years of the new century, these letters came from children in Wausau proper, but as the population of the County grew and the readership the Record-Herald expanded, letters would come in from farms and villages across the County, and even from cities outside Marathon County like Merrill, Marshfield, and Wisconsin Rapids (called Grand Rapids in 1914 as shown in the example bellow).

The gifts they asked for typically included some kind of clothing (dresses, stocking caps, suspenders, etc.) and often some sort of art supplies. Boys frequently asked for guns and musical instruments (i.e. drums, horns), while girls usually asked for dolls and assorted accessories for them (carriages, beds, clothes). And over the years, the toys did modernize with the times (i.e. by the 1920s boys often asked for electric train sets).

But the most commonly wished for gift among for all letter-writers, was unquestionably candy and nuts. Nearly every letter to Santa published in the twenty years between1908 and 1928 asked for some variation of candies and nuts.

Not all letters received by the newspaper were published, although they seem to have made an effort to publish as many as they could. But the editors during certain periods sometimes had to leave letters unpublished if the children did not sign their names. Additionally, the Letters to Santa section for many years began with a warning to would-be pranksters:

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The success of the Letters to Santa section proved to be a bit of a problem for the Wausau Record-Herald by the late 1920s. In 1929, so many children were sending them their letters for Santa, that the newspaper had to dedicate entire pages to publishing them. Twenty years earlier, the number of letters they were sent had numbered one or two dozen (for example there were 22 published in all of 1907, and just 12 in 1908). But a single issue in 1929 saw as many as 70 letters being published. And so the Wausau Record-Herald looked for another option in the future.

Decline of Printed Letters to Santa

On December 17th, 1929, the Wausau Record-Herald issued a notice that any letters mailed after that day, would not be published that year. 

NO MORE LETTERS

After today, no more letters addressed to Santa Claus will be published by the Record-Herald. Little folks who have put off their Santa Claus letter writing will have to use other means to reach their beloved, kindly saint. But the Record-Herald has every reason to believe their wishes will reach old Santa, even if he doesn't read their letters in this newspaper.

The following year, the Wausau Record-Herald published a letter from Old Saint Nick himself, addressing the situation.

Although the Record-Herald continued to publish a list of those children who sent letters to Santa over the early 1930s, once they stopped publishing the letters, the list of names got smaller and smaller each year.²  And after 1933, the Wausau Record-Herald ceased publishing letters altogether.

Children were still writing letters to Santa Claus of course, but they were increasingly being sent to places other than the Wausau Record Herald. One place that letters were increasginly being read into the 1930s, was over the airwaves by radio stations.

^ Whether he was reading letters over the radio or just greeting children, Santa often seemed to be in residence at local department stores.

And over the 1930s, the children in the greater-Wausau area increasingly found other, more personal ways to interact with Old Saint Nicholas. Appearances at department stores, at the schools as part of a traveling program, and as part of the annual holiday parades, provided the little ones of the area a chance to tell Santa what they wanted in person.

1- Santa Letters: Gateway to Kindness published by the U.S. Postal Service; Actually the first attempt to make a policy giving these would-be dead letters to charities started back in 1907, but the charities were overwhelmed by the numbers, and so it would be put on hold until it was revived in 1911, and extended until it was made a permanent policy in 1913.

2- By my count, in 1931 the Wausau Record-Herald published recepits  for 33 letters they received that December. There were only 7 names published in 1932. And if it were not for the 11 letters sent to the Wausau Record-Herald from a class in Edgar , there would be only 8 letters acknowledged in 1933.