From Books to Barbie: The Historical Evolution of Children’s Letters to Father Christmas

The act of writing a letter to Father Christmas constitutes an annual custom for children globally. It provides an opportunity to articulate desired presents for Christmas Day stockings, alongside demonstrating their worthiness of gifts through good behavior throughout the year. Dr. Ceri Houlbrook, a lecturer in history and folklore at the University of Hertfordshire, has dedicated extensive time to examining thousands of children’s letters preserved in archives nationwide. She stated: “Children are so overlooked in social history, in how we talk about the past… [but] these letters by children are snapshots in time.” Dr. Houlbrook’s research initiative commenced in 2018, leading her to visit numerous archives since then. These collections include letters from the 1970s and 1980s, originally compiled by Sheffield City Council and now housed at Sheffield University due to its specific interest in material from those decades. More recently, she visited Leamington Spa Museum, in Warwickshire, which has gathered letters composed during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown “which felt more like diary entries, how bored the children were, how they can’t wait to get back to school.” She also noted that “In the early 20th Century, there’s talk of how many letters to Father Christmas ended up in the Post Office’s dead letter office, which is an office where the letters that don’t have a real address are sent to – and then they just got destroyed, which is really, really tragic for a historian,” she added. Additionally, she has reviewed digitized letters donated to the Post Office Museum in London. The origins and transformations of the custom of writing letters to Father Christmas are a subject of inquiry. “We don’t know exactly, but it was probably at some point in the 19th Century,” Dr Houlbrook explained. Historical newspaper articles refer to it as an established custom, and some letters discovered in chimneys suggest children would place them there, anticipating a supernatural entity would retrieve them. During this period, literacy rates were increasing due to the introduction of compulsory education, and children were also aware of a dependable postal service. By the close of the 19th Century, Father Christmas had acquired a specific location and address. “By the end of the 19th Century, Father Christmas had a place and an address – he had the North Pole,” Dr Houlbrook stated. A notable letter from the early 1900s illustrates this, reading: “‘To the Post Office Manager, I don’t know where Father Christmas lives, but please forward it on’.” This demonstrates the concept of a postal network where a postmaster would facilitate delivery even without a precise address. Dr. Houlbrook observed a significant shift in the nature of requests. She said: “The earlier ones are much more modest in what they’re asking for, one from the 1890s just asks for paints – that’s it – another from the early 20th Century asks for a hymn book.” By the 1970s, children began submitting considerably longer lists of requests, frequently including retail prices or catalogue page numbers. “Nearly every little girl in 1970s Sheffield was asking for a Sindy doll.” The 1980s marked the gradual appearance of Barbie. Many more girls in the 1980s requested items such as make-up and miniskirts, a change from the 1970s when their requests mirrored those of boys for toys and books. She cautioned against misinterpreting these changes as an indication of children becoming more materialistic over the decades. “But these are things that they want to play with, things they want to read and listen to – it’s not all about stuff,” said Dr Houlbrook. Another observed development is children’s increased curiosity; their letters are longer, and they show a greater desire to engage Father Christmas in conversation. Dr Houlbrook noted: “They’re asking things like, ‘How is Mrs Claus? I hope you’re ready for Christmas’ and warn, ‘Be careful of the snow’.” They also discuss his various folklore helpers—elves, pixies, fairies, and angels—each child holding slightly different perceptions of who assists Santa. However, the letters also convey the children’s understanding of the necessity to remain in Father Christmas’s favor. This is evidenced by numerous declarations such as: “‘I’ve been really good this year’, ‘I’ve helped Nana’, ‘I’ve done my homework’,” she recounted. Dr. Houlbrook also finds amusement in the discernible presence of adult voices within the letters. She shared: “One of them made me laugh, saying, ‘My daddy says that you actually prefer beer and peanuts’ – and you could just imagine that child leaving beer and peanuts and the dad rubbing his hands together,” she said. Inspired by this correspondence, Dr. Houlbrook recently authored Winter’s Wishfall, a novel about an archivist exploring boxes of “Dear Santa” letters. Dr. Houlbrook expressed her enduring enchantment with these archives. She stated: “I’ve not lost the magic of going to these archives – they’re sweet and they’re funny, the belief behind them is lovely – and they give children a voice,” she said. She reiterated: “Children are so overlooked in social history, in how we talk about the past, because there are so few documents from their perspective – the information we have about them does tend to come from adults.” She concluded that “These letters by children are snapshots in time, when they sit down with pencil and paper, think about their lives, their year and why they deserve what they really, really want.”