The excitement of the child would be enough to melt the heart of Ebenezer Scrooge himself.
For generations children have written letters to Santa that include their gift wish lists and reminder that cookies and milk will be waiting him on Christmas Eve. But only recently have return letters from that jolly one been available. From children just old enough to know who Santa is to those who are really questioning his existence, receiving a letter from Santa! is sure to make the season even more special. Even the doubters will have to pause and think about it a little longer.
Sure you can write your child a letter, sign Santa’s name and put the North Pole as the return address, but most parents don’t really have the time during this busy season to create a letter from santa, get special stationary and make sure it looks like the “real thing.” This is one of those times when it may be best to let the experts do the job for you so that your child can get a letter from Santa.
Christmas is the most magical time of the year and no one is more magical than Santa Claus himself a letter from Santa will just add to that magic.
The story of Santa Claus begins with Nicholas, who was a Greek born during the third century in the village of Patara in what is now the country of Turkey. His Christian parents were very wealthy and raised him to be a devout Christian. Unfortunately for Nicholas, they died in an epidemic while he was a young boy. He was raised by his uncle, also named Nicholas, who was the bishop of Patara. Nicholas also spent time at a monastery, which had been founded by his uncle.
Following the words of Jesus to “sell what you own and give the money to the poor,” Nicholas used his inheritance to assist the needy, the sick, and the suffering. He dedicated his life to serving God and was made Bishop of Myra while still a young man.
Bishop Nicholas became known throughout the land for his generosity to those in need and his love for children. One story tells of a poor man with three unmarried daughters. In those days a young woman’s father had to offer a prospective husband something of value-a dowry. The custom was that the larger the dowry, the better the chance that a young woman would find a good husband. Without a dowry, a woman was unlikely to marry. This poor man’s daughters, without dowries, were therefore destined to remain single.
The story goes that on three different occasions, a bag of gold appeared in their home-providing the needed dowries. The bags of gold, tossed through an open window, are said to have landed in stockings or shoes left before the fire to dry. This led to the custom of children hanging stockings or putting out shoes, eagerly awaiting gifts from Saint Nicholas. Sometimes the story is told with gold balls instead of bags of gold. That is why three gold balls, sometimes represented as oranges, are one of the symbols for St. Nicholas who became widely known as the gift giver.
The portrayal of Santa Claus has changed over the years to the current rotund man with the smile behind the white beard and dressed in red.

Getting a personal letter from Santa!letter from Santa will not only make a child happy this year but will provide memories for years to come.

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Every family may have slightly different Christmas traditions with regards to Santa Claus, but there are some very easy things any person can do to keep the belief in Santa at an all time high. The following 7 techniques will keep your child believing in the magic and wonderment of Santa Claus and you don’t have to be familiar with the history of Santa Claus to apply them.

1) Have your child write a Santa Letter. This can be a simple letter that your child can write to Santa Claus. Children absolutely love to write a letter to Santa, but they occasionally need a little parental guidance to pull it off. 

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Help your child include a special list of gifts they desire for Christmas into the Santa letter. Many children enjoy getting more creative by drawing or cutting out pictures that represent the gifts they want.

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Once the child’s Santa letter is finished, simply mail it to the North Pole. Mail it to the following Santa Claus address: Santa Claus, 1 Candy Cane Lane, North Pole 00001. Don’t bother using a return address, you wouldn’t want it to return as ‘undeliverable’ for any reason.

2) Write a Letter from Santa and have your child receive it in the mail. Create a personalized letter from Santa by directly mentioning your child’s name and certain information about your child in the text. This will make for a much more believable Santa letter. Be sure to make these letters from Santa different for each child in the same household. The child will have no doubt that Santa Claus is coming to town after they receive their personalized letter from Santa!

“I can honestly state as a parent that the personalized letter from Santa has single handedly restored my son’s belief! The look of shock and amazement on his face when he got an ‘authentic letter from Santa’ quickly abolished any doubt he previously had about Santa Claus.”

Print the Santa letter on authentic looking letterhead, as this will help to reinforce the believability. Many different styles of paper can be found at your local office supply store.

You can add to the fun by getting your letter from Santa postmarked at the North Pole. Simply send your Santa letter inside another sealed, stamped envelope to: North Pole Christmas Cancellation, Postmaster, 5400 Mail Trail, Fairbanks, AK 99709-9999. (It needs to arrive by December 15th)

Many parents add a certificate for being on Santa’s “Nice List” along with the Santa Letter for added effect. Another great item to add with the Santa letter is a Santa Claus coloring sheet. Combining the personalized Santa letter, the nice certificate, and the Santa Claus coloring sheet is a sure fire method for keeping your child believing.

3) Have your child leave milk and cookies out for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. This is simple enough to do with your child. It lets your child know YOU still believe, too. Make it a bonding experience for you and your child by baking the cookies together on Christmas Eve. Don’t underestimate how powerful this can be for creating joyful memories of Santa Claus, for both you and your child. Did you know that Santa’s favorite cookie recipe is Chocolate Chip?

Put the fresh cookies on a plate next to a glass of cold milk. You can even put a short letter to Santa Claus next to the cookies and milk. These tasty treats will give Santa the energy he needs to continue traveling to the millions of other households awaiting his arrival.

Don’t forget to leave some crumbs on the table Christmas morning. Your child will feel honored that Santa Claus ate the whole plate of cookies and drank all of the milk before rushing on his way.

4) On Christmas Eve, have your child sprinkle reindeer food on the lawn. Santa Claus gets milk and cookies on Christmas Eve, but what about Rudolph and the rest of the joyful gang? What do they eat? Well, reindeer food, of course!

You can make a batch of environmentally friendly reindeer food with common grocery items such as oats or granola. (Do not use potentially hazardous items, such as glitter in your reindeer food. Although this may make the reindeer food appear to be magical in some way, it can be extremely dangerous if ingested by small children, should they decide to ‘sample’ the reindeer food. It can also be potentially hazardous to the small animals outside such as rabbits, dogs, or cats that may eat the food.)

Once you have the reindeer food mixed up, walk outside with your child on Christmas Eve night and explain the importance of making sure Santa’s sleigh team stays fed. Sprinkle a small amount onto your yard near bushes or trees.

This healthy reindeer snack will give Rudolph and the rest of the reindeer the nourishment they need to continue flying Santa’s heavy sleigh into the night. Your child will be proud for helping Santa Claus on his journey, and is sure to raise the belief in Rudolph and the other reindeer as well.

5) Leave Santa Claus tracks in your house on Christmas Eve. Being sure to not stain your carpet, leave some dirty boot prints by the fireplace (or doorway). Be sure to draw attention to the Santa Claus footprints on Christmas morning. To a child, this is solid evidence that Santa had been to their house.

6) A month or so after Christmas, send your child a postcard from Santa Claus on vacation. This not only keeps your child believing, but reminds your child that Santa is in their hearts all year long. It also answers the common question posed by children after Christmas, “Where is Santa Claus now?”

Be sure to make the postcard from somewhere very warm and sunny. After all, Santa does need a break from all that North Pole snow.

7) Mail your child a birthday greeting from Santa Claus. This technique works in tandem with the personalized Santa Letter you mailed your child previously. Mailing your child a simple birthday card from Santa is an excellent way to keep your child’s belief high throughout the year. Your child will think, “Wow! Santa actually knows my birthday!” The shock on your child’s face will be priceless.

Parents that have extremely intelligent kids or kids that are getting slightly older will genuinely need to utilize all 7 techniques mentioned above to keep their child believing in Santa Claus.

These techniques will assure your child is one of the millions of children that write Santa Letters each and every holiday season… one of the millions of children that believe wholeheartedly in Santa Claus. Or See This Page letter from Santa!

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Now since Santa Claus has the magnificent capability to visit homes around the world in a single night it’s only fitting that more than one place would claim to be his home.

 It’s a common, widely accepted belief that Santa hails from the wintry North Pole, but people in Finland will also tell you that Santa calls that country his home. To prove it, the Finns will even invite you to visit Santa in his workshop before Christmas or during the year. You can watch Santa Claus as he and his elves busy themselves for their end-of-year Christmas expedition around the globe.

The tradition of Santa Claus was brought to America however by Dutch colonists who settled in New York City, which was called New Amsterdam at the time. The real St. Nicholas is said to be a minor saint from the 4th Century with a reputation for generosity and kindness that gave rise to legends of many miracles that he performed for the poor and unhappy. One of the stories about the legend of St. Nicholas is that he saved three poor girls who were sisters from being sold into a life of slavery or prostitution by their father. According to the legend, Santa Claus provided the girls with a dowry so that they could get married.
　

The legend of St. Nicholas led to hundreds of people being devoted to him and consequently thousands of European churches became dedicated to him. After the Reformation period however, widespread practice and worship of St. Nicholas disappeared in European countries that were Protestant, except in Holland where the legend of St. Nicholas continued. St. Nicholas was known as Sint Nikolaas but that was later corrupted to Sinter Klaas.

Dutch colonists took this tradition of Sinter Klaas to New York City where it was adopted using the English name of Santa Claus. Over time, the Dutch legend of the kindly saint was combined with old Nordic folktales about a magician who punished naughty children and rewarded good ones with presents to give rise to the stories that now exist about Santa Claus.

The popularity in America today of the images and legend of Santa Claus can be traced to the poem, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,’ that was written by Clement Clarke Moore in 1822. In that poem, Moore described St. Nicholas as a jolly fellow who flew from house to house in a sleigh pulled by reindeers and waited for children to go to bed on Christmas Eve before he came down the chimney to deliver Christmas presents for them.

Following the distribution of that poem, the popular magazine Harper’s Weekly, published cartoons by Thomas Nast between 1863 and 1886 that depicted Santa as a cheerful fellow with a large round belly and long white beard who wore a bright red suit that was trimmed with white fur. In those cartoons, Santa also held a sack, which was filled with toys for boys and girls, over his shoulder. The cartoons also showed Santa reading letters from good boys and girls, working in his workshop with his elves, checking his list to make sure he had all the required toys and even showed his wife, Mrs. Claus.

The red and white-trimmed suit of Santa Claus is believed to be the colors that the original St. Nicholas wore because red and white were the colors of the robes worn by traditional bishops. It is also believed that the Coca Cola Co. played a role in what is regarded as the popular look of Santa Claus today through paintings by artist Haddon Sundblom that were placed in some of the company’s advertisement between 1931 and 1964.

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An interesting book, 4,000 Years of Christmas , takes the celebrations held in winter back thousands of years to Mesopotamia, the Cradle of Civilization.
The day that Christians chose to celebrate the birth of Jesus may well have been influenced by these ancient solar celebrations. As we have seen, December 25 was already a holiday for many people so making it one for Christians also seemed natural.

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Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer is by far the most popular and well-known of Santa’s reindeer.

The repetitiveness in his name probably accounts for part of the popularity; it would certainly be difficult to have equally catchy descriptions of Santa’s other eight reindeer-sometimes it’d hard to even remember their names. Let’s see, there’s Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen.

The story of Rudolph first appeared in 1939 when Montgomery Ward department stores issued a booklet to entice more people to come into the store. For a number of years the store had purchased coloring books to give to the children, but this was during the Great Depression and the company wanted to save money. Robert L. May, an employee who worked in the advertising department of the store, was asked to come up with something to replace the coloring book.

May had a four year old daughter who was quite distressed over the terminal illness of her mother and in an attempt to distract and entertain her he wrote a story in poetry titled “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” In response to the request for something to replace the coloring books, May put this poem in a booklet and 2.4 million copies were handed out that year. Even with the paper shortages during World War II, by 1946 over 6 million copies  of the popular booklet had been distributed.

Johnny Marks, May’s brother-in-law, was a radio producer who during WW II also produced entertainment shows for soldiers overseas. He was requested to write a song based on the popular poem, “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Marks honored the request; later the song gained great popularity through the recording by Gene Autry.

Over 30 million copies of the recording have been sold. In addition to recordings, the 1964 television special about Rudolph, narrated by Burl Ives, remains a holiday favorite to this day. Rudolph is a much-loved Christmas image.

Rudolph’s story is fascinating not only because of the captivating tempo of the lyrics but also for the moral lessons it portrays. As you remember, the other reindeer made Rudolph an outcast; they laughed at his shiny red nose. His different look caused the other reindeer to refuse to play with him.

Then came a Christmas Eve when it was so foggy that Santa was afraid he would not be able to make his round to deliver gifts. He approached Rudolph and asked him if he would lead the team and ‘guide my sleigh tonight.’ His shiny red nose was exactly what was needed to light the way for Santa. The story concludes with how much all the other reindeer loved him and how he would go down in history.

There are many moral lessons to be gleaned from Rudolph’s story, not the least of which is that what one may consider to be a negative characteristic, as Rudolph’s red nose was to the other reindeer, can be quickly changed to a positive one.

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By Abby Munroe

As adults we often forget the joy and excitement with which we anticipated Christmas as children. Beginning somewhere around the first of December we would begin the countdown. Oh, the excitement as we helped our parents decorate the tree and inside and outside the house. In some neighborhoods there was friendly, and sometimes maybe not so friendly, competition, to see which family had the best outdoor decorations. Each year they seemed to get more and more elaborate. John Grisham portrayed this so well in his book which was later made into a movie, Skipping Christmas.
And in the midst of it all was awaiting the visit of Santa Claus. Children today still wait for that Christmas Eve visit with great expectation. In my childhood, hours were spent pouring over catalogues looking for just the most perfect and newest toys to ask Santa for. (Yes, that was a number of years ago as I am now a proud grandmother!) Now children have TV and the internet to see what’s available to delight them on Christmas morning. However, even with all the changes in our way of looking for gifts, two things have remained the same-Santa is the one children believe makes wishes for Christmas morning come true and they still write him letters to be sure he knows exactly what they want him to bring.
I remember my daughters sitting at the kitchen table working diligently to write their Santa letters. They were so careful about the penmanship and spelling. They would draw pictures for Santa and tell him cookies and milk would be waiting for him on Christmas Eve. After carefully addressing them to Santa Claus at the North Pole, we would stamp the envelopes and put them in the mailbox. letter from Santa!