Letters to Santa: a look inside children’s hearts

I love writing this particular blog, which is why I do it every year.

I’m blessed to be good friends with Santa Jim, whom many of you might know from Webster’s Winter Wonderland celebration, where he greets children at Village Hall and rides in the parade with Mrs. Claus. As a professional Santa, Jim also works as one of the Santas at Eastview Mall, and every year hooks me up with some of the children’s letters he pulled from the mailbox there.

These letters often make me laugh out loud, like the one a few years ago, obviously written by one of Santa’s parental co-conspirators, who wrote,

Dear Santa,

I have been pretty good for a two year old. Daddy says if I don’t start pooping in the potty he is going to disown me. I’m sure he’s kidding though … I think.

This year’s letter’s didn’t have anything quite as entertaining, but were in many other ways similar to the batches I’ve gotten in the past. Many came in painstakingly decorated envelopes, covered in stickers and marker drawings. The wish lists were written in pen, pencil, colored pencil and markers (and only one printed off the computer). They were scribbled on construction paper, sparkly craft paper, or just a page ripped from a note pad. A few just had pictures printed offline and pasted on the paper. Several children took advantage of fill-in-the-blank pre-printed Santa letters.

Most appear to have been written by the children themselves, so the “lists” varied from a one-year old’s scribbles to neatly printed and organized ones. These were occasionally highlighted and sometimes helpfully numbered (some in order of priority), even noting at which store Santa could get each gift (what happened to the North Pole?).

A few children asked for only one item, but many more were much longer, one stretching to 38 toys and games (hence the highlighting and numbering).

I saw a photo recently of Santa reading a child’s letter when he was visiting Webster Village Hall, his musings captioned as: “Electric scooter, iPhone, video games, PS5 etc… he’s only 7 years old.. what happened to trucks, cars, trains, airplanes, yellow Tonka dirt movers?” There were indeed several similar requests in these letters; Ipads, PS5, Oculus, Roblox. I suspect some of these children will be rather disappointed on Christmas morning, especially the one whose entire list consisted of a Play Station Portable, Apple Pencil, Saga Genesis, Sega CD, DS charger and Nintendo Switch.

But Santa will be glad to hear that trucks and cars were most definitely among the more frequently requested items. Legos were by far the most popular, but there were also a lot of requests for super heroes, bikes, board games, stuffies, dolls and clothes. Harry Potter items, Pokemon and Nerf guns also came up a lot, and I was pleased to see many kids ask for books.

Only one Bills fan and one Swiftie in the bunch, apparently.

A few other unique requests included a telescope, a hamster, donuts, a toy milk shake maker, exercise mat, rubber bands (!) and a Furby (they still make those?). One child only asked for a few dog bones for their puppy.

While I don’t think I LOLed at any of the letters, a few did make me smile:

Dear Santa. for my christmas list i want a PS5 and a drum set. i am six and can i have a tv in my room i want one

Dear Santa I want a toy elf that Look Like Mr. tinkle bottoms and I am nameing it Mr. tinkle bottoms the 2nd.

Dear Santa Claus, Thank you sooooooooooo much for the gifts last year I had a wonderful christmas and I hope you did to! … Thank you and even if I’m on your naughty list and you can’t make it happen I still love and appreciate you!

Dear Santa, I would like a car that I could ride on and it could move and can it please be pink and another choice is a really big 20 inch squishmallow named shena.

This one written by a parent, however, was probably my favorite (the kids’ names have been changed):

Dear Santa,

We are so excited for Christmas and for you to visit our house! We’ve been really good boys and we are working on keeping our hands to ourselves 🙂 Bobby would like lots of both big and small monster trucks. Jimmy would like 3 garbage trucks, a remote control monster truck, 2 front loaders, and 4 bulldozers.

Thank you for making toys for all the kids in the world. Merry Christmas! We will leave you milk and cookies at our house!

Here’s hoping you’re able to spend time with your loved ones this holiday season, because that is the best gift of all.

* * *

email me  at missyblog@gmail.com. “Like” this blog on Facebook and follow me on Instagram and Threads (@missyblog)

You can also get email notifications every time I post a new blog by using the “Follow Me” link on the right side of this page.

(posted 12/23/2023)

Tags: Missy Rosenberry, Webster NY