The toys on the Christmas wishlist may have evolved in more than 140 years but children, it seems, do not change. That, at least, is the suggestion of a newly uncovered letter to Father Christmas dating from 1883, believed to be one of the earliest known such messages in the UK.
The letter, addressed “to DeAR SAnTA CLAus”, was written by a six-year-old girl called Janet and preserves her idiosyncratic spelling and capitalisation. “PLeAs BRIng a Doll to Me with a cRADEL, AND a TRuMPtet to JiMMie, AND SoMe OTHer THing to MA AND PA,” wrote Janet, demonstrating both a touching concern for her family members and a canny nose for publicity.
The letter had been sent to the Leeds Mercury newspaper “to the care of our colums in the Suppliment”, the paper reported on 22 December 1883. “The printer could easily have put Jane’s [sic] note into better shape,” it continued, “but then it would have been his and not hers, and it might not in that case have reached Santa Claus, which it is sure to do now.
“Jane herself no doubt will put the paper just where Santa Claus will see it. He is coming.” A sentiment that will be cheering to the millions of children who have carried on the tradition this year – even if Mega Evolution Elite Pokémon trading cards and musical Wicked: For Good dolls are more in favour for 2025.
The practice of sending letters to Santa, like so much about his now superstar scarlet-clad status, seems to have evolved in the United States, where as early as 1773 the fourth-century Saint Nicholas, later Sinterklaas, was being commemorated as “St a Claus” by Dutch settlers in New York.
As the US postal service became more formalised and efficient in the aftermath of the civil war, which ended in 1865, the idea of writing a letter to a benevolent man who lived at the north pole gathered currency. In England, where a figure called Father Christmas had emerged from medieval folk tales to personify festive cheer, Santa Claus was first recorded in 1864, according to English Heritage. By the 1880s, the two figures had merged into one.
Janet’s letter has been uncovered by the historical and genealogical research site Ancestry in its Newspapers.com database. Its researchers also found another letter, written by Mabel Hancock, aged 11, published in the Hampshire Telegraph and Naval Chronicle on 24 December 1898.
“Dear Santa Claus, I am writing you this letter to ask you not to forget to call on us this year,” wrote Mabel, who seems to have had a similarly clear sense of the model virtues that might help her get published. “I have a little brother four years old who will hang up his stocking; I will also hang up mine, but dear Santa Claus, if you have not much to spare, do not put anything in mine.
“I should like you to fill my brother’s up to the brim with something nice, for I can just fancy how delighted he will be, and mother tells me there is more pleasure in making others happy than in being made happy ourselves,” the virtuous Miss Hancock continued. “I think the practice of self-denial is one of the first things us children should learn.”
No doubt your own child has written something very similar this year.
