another christmas memory; santa letters

my father delivers mail at the post office in town and as much as he hates it, one time of year i think he enjoys working there. every christmas season santa letters start to pour into the post office, i dont know when he started or what made him decide to do it but my father took it upon himself to reply to the letters as santa and send the kids little notepads and pencils along with a personalized letter from santa. looking back at the letters i kept that i received from santa i can tell it is his handwriting.

every year he buys a huge box of holiday themed pencils, notepads, tiny coloring books, stencils and erasers along with holiday printed paper. my mother and him work diligently to make sure every letter gets responded to and that it is personalized for the child. i remember one year a child wrote him a letter in spanish and he made us take it into school to the spanish teacher so she could translate it and tell him what to write back. he tries his hardest to make sure every child feels special when receiving their letter from santa.

the majority of the letters come from our local area, and some on his route so he knows the children and tries to include little things in the letters to make them feel special. one year we got a letter and my father knew that the family was in need and the little girl might not get everything she had asked for on her list, so him and i went out to the store and bought a few things on her list and wrapped them. very very very early on christmas morning (aka 2 am) he woke me up, we got the presents and put them on the front porch of their house. the years that followed after i would always make sure that my dad would wake me up christmas morning to help deliver the gifts to special families.

sending out the christmas cards with my father, christmas 1991