Teaching
your children to write letters to Santa claus is fun for the whole
family. The kid learn to write letters, or write at all, and parents
find out what their fondest wish for Xmas gifts are. But it wasn’t
always that way.
Early versions of Santa Claus tended
to depict him as a disciplinarian. The first image of St. Nicholas in
the United States, commissioned by the New-York Historical Society in
1810, showed him in ecclesiastical garb with a switch in hand next to a
crying child, while the earliest known Santa picture-book shows him
leaving a birch rod in a naughty child’s stocking, which he “Directs a
Parent’s hand to use / When virtue’s path his sons refuse.”
The
earliest Santa letters are similarly didactic, usually coming from St.
Nicholas, rather than written to him. The minister Theodore Ledyard
Cuyler recalled receiving “an autograph letter from Santa Claus, full of
good counsels” during his childhood in 1820s western New York. In the
1850s, Fanny Longfellow (wife of the poet Henry Wadsworth) wrote her
three children letters each Christmas that commented on their behavior
over the previous year and how they could improve it.
“[Y]ou have
picked up some naughty words which I hope you will throw away as you
would sour or bitter fruit,” Santa explained in an 1853 letter. “Try to
stop to think before you use any, and remember if no one else hears you
God is always near.” In an era before childhood was celebrated as a
distinct period of a person’s life, gratifying kids’ imaginations was
less important than teaching them manners that would speed them toward
adulthood.
Well, we know that custom changed over the
years. Postal rates fell, Santa Claus became a pop culture idol, and
stores wanted to sell toys. Read the history of
our custom of having children write letters to Santa Claus at Smithsonian.
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