The Journal Tribune will begin publishing children’s letters to Santa Claus starting Thursday. FILE PHOTO
BIDDEFORD — Perhaps author Edna Ferber put it best when she said that Christmas isn’t really a season, it’s a feeling. And who better to epitomize the spirit of Christmas than jolly ol’ Santa Claus himself.
The annual visitor from the North is once again gearing up for his overnight ride and deliveries of gifts for children all over the world.
Santa’s helpers here at the Journal Tribune have been busy this week, processing letters for him from students attending area schools. These letters will be published later this week in the newspaper and will run through our special Christmas Eve edition on Monday.
The actual tradition of newspapers publishing letters to Santa began more than a century ago and is attributed to Thomas Nast’s famous illustration contained in the December 1871 issue of Harper’s Weekly magazine.
Nast depicted sitting Santa at a desk going through his mail. He has two stacks he’s piled up including one called “Letters from Naughty Children’s Parents” and the other labeled as “Letters from Good Children’s Parents.”
Because of that popular illustration, the U.S. Post Office reported that in 1872, thousands of letters were mailed to Santa, a tradition that endures to this very day.
The Journal Tribune has been publishing Letters to Santa each December in the newspaper since 1931 and it continues this year with letters from students at Fairfield School in Saco and Dayton Consolidated School. Some will make you laugh, some will make you cry, but all of the letters will warm your heart and make you wish you were a child again.
Some spelling and grammar in the letters has been corrected for readability purposes, but the intention remains the same. We’ve accumulated quite a few letters this year, but will try to publish each and every one of them.
Look for this year’s letters to start appearing in the Journal Tribune starting on Thursday and we certainly hope that Santa Claus reads them closely and makes dreams become reality come Christmas morning.
— Executive Editor Ed Pierce can be reached at 282-1535 or by email at editor@journaltribune.com
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