Santa Claus is the other name for Father Christmas. However, a whole town is named after Santa himself in Indiana, United States. The town boasts of an awarding-winning theme park, historical sites and more.
United States Bureau Chief OLUKOREDE YISHAU writes about how the town changed its name from Santa Fe to Santa Claus and other interesting details.
Melissa Arnold, the executive director of the Spencer County Visitors Bureau, and Patricia Koch, the founder of the Santa Claus Museum, live in an interesting town named Santa Claus. It is in Indiana, United States. In the town, it is Christmas all the time, especially during the holiday season.
In the town, there is a Santa Claus Christmas celebration in the first three weekends of December for families. Children write letters to Santa and it has a tradition of answering these letters sent from all over the world to Santa Claus.
Arnold and Koch, at a briefing organised by the Foreign Press Centre, said the town offers rich experiences to visitors.
Ms. Koch, who is called the matriarch of the town, said: “My father was Santa Claus from 1930 until 1984, and so I inherited a great love for Santa and a belief in Santa that still lives today and try to follow in his footsteps of bringing joy to children, specifically now – it used to be in Holiday World for many years, and everybody knows that’s a place of great fun and joy for children.”
She continued: “I founded the Santa Claus Museum and Village, and did that because there’s so much history here. There’s so much history about how the post office was named, how the town was named, who were the first inhabitants, how did the letter-writing start, what’s the story behind all of these things. And I knew that I had lived through them and thought that it was really an obligation for me to try to retain those in some way.
“So I did do a book called Santa’s Daughter, which has a great deal of history in it, plus getting the original post office building on our grounds from 1856 and the original Protestant church from 1880. And then there’s a wonderful 22-foot – it is not granite, it is a concrete statue of Santa Claus that is from 1935.
“So, we have those three buildings to see, or items, and then we have a museum of documents and stories and pictures of the history of the town and the post office and Santa Claus himself in a Santa Claus outfit and a train station and different things. A really fun place to visit because it’s outside; people can walk around. Children can go up and visit the statue and roll down the hill in the grass, and I love it because it’s just really very wholesome.”
Answering Santa’s letters
Ms Koch said the biggest thing she does is to help Santa answer all the letters that children write.
“We receive many, many, many, many, many thousands of letters that come to this town, Santa Claus, Indiana, and we spend many hours answering every one that we can answer – as we can possibly answer – and with many wonderful volunteers. At this moment I have three volunteers over there. We are – we – the letters would not get to the children, so we’re being very specific about answering those that are close.
“But it is a labor of love for us to do that, and we have answered currently 21,000 letters, and the postage and everything about that is free. Nobody pays a penny for anything. And if you have a chance to talk about us, please ask parents to check their letters and make sure that we have an address. Santa knows where the children are, but the elves don’t always know. So we do need an address,” she said.
The town also welcomes international students. It has a programme in its high school of having students from all over the world. It recently had least eight students from Spain, Germany, and Norway helping answer letters.
How it became Santa Claus
Koch said the town was originally Santa Fee.
“My wonderful grandmother, Apollonia Shew always called it Santa Fee, and I thought that’s what it was. We have the document in our museum that shows very definitely that in 1856, the postmaster from Fulda, Indiana, made an application to what on the document says Washington City, January 8th, 1856, to get a post office in the town of Santa Fee. And that “Santa Fee” is up in the left-hand corner. Somebody wrote somehow, ‘Choose another name than Santa Fe.’ I don’t know if they didn’t see the other E or just decided to not pay attention to it. But there was already a Santa Claus post – there was a Santa Fe post office in Indiana, so they said, you can’t have that name. But that’s – we were Santa Fee.
“But at any rate, somebody wrote “Santa Claus” with a black ink pen with – Santa Claus, and then somebody wrote through that, and then somebody wrote something that looks like “Seedlick” – of course, we wouldn’t be here if we were Seedlick – and then above all of that somebody wrote “Santa Clause” with an E. That person changed our history forever. We have no idea who wrote that.
“But the magic of all that is that it happened January 8th, 1856. And the postmaster who made the application, his name was Nicholaus Fisher. So Nicholaus himself asked that this town be given a post office name of Santa Claus, which I think is magic. So that’s how the town came to be.”
How letter writing started
She explained that the letter writing started in 1914, but there is no documentation of that at all.
“We do have documentation from 1930 on, when my father returned from World War I and saw that the postmaster was very busy with children’s letters and all the mail that was coming in. And he had been Santa Claus on his first ship when he was a 19-year-old sailor in Brooklyn Navy Yard and they were looking for somebody to be Santa Claus for a children’s party. And another sailor said, there’s a guy in the engine room that says he’s from Santa Claus, Indiana, so maybe he’ll do it. He did that that day, and he made the vow that if he lived through the war, he would be Santa Claus.
“So when he returned to his native place, he began being Santa Claus, immediately visited the postmaster and saw how busy he was, and he organized the letter writing somewhat in that he took the letters out in big boxes to the local high school, to the two monasteries we have in the area, to American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars clubs, and just had them answer letters. It was kind of a just, hey, neighborhood, let’s all help do this.
“That continued on. I started when I was about 12 years old and we would – he would bring letters home and we would answer them at home. And then in 1984, a group of us formed the group called Santa’s Elves, Incorporated, which made us more – we were more organized. We still did it in our homes, but we had certain times when people could do it.
“We started having some form letters to help because it becomes an almost – you cannot write a letter to 21,000 people and have everybody do it correctly. And so it became more organized in the ’80s. I started when I was 12 years old, which was a long time ago, and then went away for 10 years to nurse, and then came back. So I restarted in the ’60s and at that point took over the legacy of my father, who passed away in ’84. I was Santa’s helper for 54 years.
“So it is a family legacy. Now we do it in the back room of the original post office building with many, many, many wonderful volunteers. The volunteers sign up online now so we know how many people are coming, and we can organize it. We have training, because it has to be done properly. We really respect these children.
“We’re just so happy that they believe, and we feel that it’s our obligation to get a letter back to them. And so we have a little training to make sure that they do it properly. And we do have four form letters, but each letter is customized with the children’s name, and at the bottom of the letter there is a personal note and a message to the child that pertains to what they wrote. So if they say, “I’ve been trying hard in school,” Santa says, “Keep up the good work in school.” If they say, “I had a fight with my sister this morning,” “Please try to stop fighting with your sister.” We try to say something that they mention in the letter so they know Santa read the letter.
“So it is a labor of love, and we have many volunteers who spend a great deal of time. We start officially the Monday after Thanksgiving, but my family always starts before that. And by the way, we get international letters, and there were 600 letters sent to Chinese – communist Chinese before Thanksgiving so that they would get them by Christmas. We get them from all over the world. And everything, as I said, is free, and given by donation,” Koch said.
Arnold added that some years they answer as many as 35,000. “So it varies greatly from year to year, but it definitely shows that kids are writing, and still are writing letters and sending them in the mail, which we think is incredible,” she said.
She said she has been really impressed this year with how many children have offered in their letters to share a couple of their gifts with children who don’t have.
“I’m amazed at how many children are saying that, which gives me hope. I think that’s wonderful, worrying about the homeless and children who don’t have as much as we have. I think that’s really great, and I’m happy to see that.
“I think – we will get the letters if they’re mailed to us. My – I make a plea every year. If you’re in Nigeria or wherever, mail them early, because right now we are, like, what, two days – that the Post Office Department – I’m sorry – it’s very slow because we have so – such a huge volume of mail. And on Saturday, it’s just a half day, and Sunday, no day – they’re closed. So we have to get these letters out. And if we don’t get them early, it’s very difficult to get them to the children on time.
“And especially schools – I didn’t even mention how many schools use this as a learning project to teach their children how to write a letter, which is wonderful, and we will get packets of 30, 50 letters from children. And we have to get all those answered, and it takes a great deal of time to do that, and so we need it early when we have volunteers.
“Of course, these volunteers are people who live here. They also want to be with their families. They want to be traveling. They want to be baking, cooking, having parties. And so right now we’re in crunch time because it’s so close to Christmas – so early, early, early with everything,” Arnold said.
Other towns with similar name
Koch said there are other Christmassy town names.
“There is a Santa Claus, Arizona. I’m not sure about Georgia. I think it might be a neighborhood, but our claim to fame is that we are the only town with Santa’s name in the post office. So we have the only Santa Claus post office in the world,” she said.
