Annually 1000s of children write personalized letter from santa to request the presents they would like to receive from the fabled North Pole resident, and in the United States those letters tend to be dropped in a real mailbox. But exactly how did that tradition start?
A few of the earliest Christmas correspondence wasn’t actually written to Santa, but instead from him. Within the first 50 % of the 19th Century, Santa Claus was more of a disciplinary figure compared to jolly old fellow who sorts “naughty” from “nice” today. Stories of Saint Nicholas were meant to encourage children to behave, and a few parents even wrote letters “from” Santa Claus for their children discussing their conduct on the previous year, mischievous or obedient, per Smithsonian.
The American picture of Santa Claus developed through the 1800s, from your 1823 publication from the poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas”-now known by its first line, “’Twas the night before Christmas”-to cartoonist Thomas Nast’s Christmas illustrations inside the widely read Harper’s Weekly. Nast’s drawings of Santa, which first appeared in Harper’s through the Civil War, helped make the visual references for Santa Claus that happen to be still familiar today, including a red suit and white beard. Nast’s drawings also captured the earliest events of the postal service’s involvement inside the Christmas workflow.
In 1871 Nast drew Santa Claus at his desk reading his mail and sorting it into two piles. Usually the one labeled “letters from naughty children’s parents” reaches well above his head, whereas “letters from good children’s parents” is a far smaller stack. Quite a while later, in 1879, Nast came up with first known image of someone using the U.S. mail system to write down to Santa Claus. Within this Harper’s illustration, a youthful figure puts a letter addressed to “St. Claus North Pole” within a mailbox on a snowy evening.
By that time, however, the mail system was already being utilized for letters to Santa. On Boxing Day 1874, by way of example, the brand new York Times included a product or service about letters “deposited within the Richmond Post Office, evidently created 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 several letters: one requested “a big wagon-not big-four wheels, two packs pop-crackers, a Mother Hubbard book.”
At first, the U.S. Postal Service would consider letters addressed to Santa Claus undeliverable, either returning them to their senders or sending them to the Dead Letter Office. Throughout the turn of your twentieth century, however, philanthropists and charities expressed curiosity about fulfilling Santa’s role for poor children who sent him letters. “The Post Office Department fails to have confidence in Santa Claus. Officially the dispenser of Christmas cheer for little folks is really a myth,” the days wrote in 1906. “The Christmas season has no charm for your prosaic employees of the Dead Letter Office. It means only a great deal of extra work and bother to them.” This article went on to deplore the unsympathetic post office and “red-tape-bound officialdom” with regard to their insufficient imagination to find a way to honor the children’s requests.
The subsequent year, the Postmaster General allowed his employees to distribute the letters, nevertheless the charitable people and organizations to whom these people were given found themselves faced with 98dexnpky task of deciding whether the children were really looking for their assistance. The resulting complaints meant the Postmaster General failed to renew the allowance these year.
His successor wrote your order in 1911 that every letters “addressed plainly and unmistakably to ‘Santa Claus’” might be transported to “responsible institutions or individuals” to use for “philanthropic purposes.” This time permission was renewed and then in 1913 made permanent. Tonight Show host Johnny Carson read out letters from needy children during December shows within the 1960s, and helps to popularize this software. In 1989, Santa got his very own Local Zip Code.