We Never Really Stop Writing to Santa

When I was seven, I wrote a letter to Santa asking for a Game Boy. I also told him that my dog had died and I was sad about it. I don't remember asking for the Game Boy in particular, but I remember writing about the dog. It felt important to tell someone.

Looking back, that's the interesting part. I could have told my parents about the dog. They knew. They were sad too. But there was something different about writing it to Santa. He was out there somewhere, listening, and he wasn't going to make it weird by bringing it up at dinner.

The First Anonymous Listener

For most kids, Santa is the first experience of writing to someone who will receive your words without judgment or awkwardness. You can ask for things. You can confess things. You can say whatever is on your mind, and the only response you'll get is either getting what you asked for or not. There's no follow-up conversation. No one's going to sit you down and talk about what you wrote.

According to TIME's history of the tradition, letters to Santa became widespread in the United States after cartoonist Thomas Nast published an illustration in 1871 showing Santa at his desk sorting through mail. The image resonated because it gave kids a visual: Santa reads your letters. He's listening.

Before that, the tradition actually ran the other direction. The Smithsonian notes that in the early 1800s, Santa was more of a disciplinarian who wrote letters to children commenting on their behavior. The shift happened when kids started writing back.

113 Years of Strangers Answering Letters

Here's something you might not know: for over a century, anonymous strangers have been answering kids' letters to Santa.

The USPS Operation Santa program started in 1912 when Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock authorized local post offices to let employees read and respond to letters addressed to Santa. By the 1940s, the program opened to the general public. Today, anyone can go online, read a child's letter, and send them a gift.

Think about that for a second. Millions of letters over 113 years, read and answered by complete strangers. The kids don't know who responded. The responders don't know the kids beyond what they wrote. It's anonymous in both directions, and it works.

We Grow Up, But the Need Doesn't Go Away

At some point, we stop writing to Santa. But the impulse that made us write in the first place doesn't disappear. We still have things we want to say to someone who won't make it complicated. We still want to put our thoughts somewhere outside our own heads.

That's part of why anonymous messaging platforms exist. The format is different, but the need is the same. You're writing to someone you'll never meet, who will receive your words and then move on. There's no ongoing relationship to manage. No one's going to bring it up later. You said the thing, someone heard it, and life continues.

Some people use ReadAndGone to share confessions they've never told anyone. Others leave advice for strangers based on mistakes they made. Some just share late-night thoughts that have nowhere else to go.

A Different Kind of Wish List

You could, if you wanted, write your Christmas wish list on ReadAndGone right now. Not for Santa, but for some stranger out there to read. Maybe that sounds weird. But is it really that different from what we did as kids?

You'd be putting your hopes into words and sending them out into the world. Someone would read them. They wouldn't know who you are. You wouldn't know who they are. But for a moment, your thoughts would exist somewhere outside your own head, received by another person.

That's really all any of us wanted when we wrote to Santa. Not just the presents, but the feeling that someone out there was listening.