100 Years of Santa’s Letters

2025-12-04

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Santa gets more mail every year than any other person on earth, but the earliest letters that I know of were not to him. They were from him. Later on, it became more normal to write to him and ask for what you were hoping to get for Christmas. This episode covers a sampling of letters from the 1850s to the 1950s, and then finishes off with the story behind one of the most famous lines in American journalism: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." It is time to vote in the poll to choose the topic of...

Santa gets more mail every year than any other person on earth, but the earliest letters that I know of were not to him. They were from him. Later on, it became more normal to write to him and ask for what you were hoping to get for Christmas. This episode covers a sampling of letters from the 1850s to the 1950s, and then finishes off with the story behind one of the most famous lines in American journalism: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

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