This is the week of Christmas Day in a year that will mainly be remembered for Covid-19 that has caused sickness, bereavement and economic havoc. Perhaps Santa Claus could make things a bit better this season, at least according to children from around the world. The emotional turmoil the pandemic has wrought has been immense on the children, if one goes by the letters they have sent to Santa. And, if like me you might wonder which post office box (at least one of them) Santa has been receiving the young ones’ mail, it is somewhere in France’s Bordeaux region. In theory, and often in practice, as I learnt in a moving news item in APNews, any letter addressed “Pere Noel” — French for Father Christmas — and slipped into any post box around the world is likely to end up there. I learnt that toiling out of sight among vineyards, Santa’s secretariat of workers (who call themselves “elves”) spends the months of November and December slicing open 12,000 envelopes a day responding on his behalf. From the first letters opened at the secretariat from November 12, it quickly became apparent how the pandemic is weighing on children, Jamila Hajji, the chief elf, told APNews. One such letter is from young Zoe, who limited her requests to a music player and amusement park tickets because “this year has been very different from others because of COVID-19.” “That’s why I am not asking you for many thing(s) to avoid infection,” Zoe wrote, signing off with “Merci!” and a heart. The letters to Father Christmas are a sort of release for them, explains Hajji. “All this year,” she says, “they have been in lockdowns, they have been deprived of school, deprived of their grandpas and grandmas. Their parents have been occupied by the health crisis and whatnot. So we, of course, can tell that the children are putting into words everything they have felt during this period.” While the letters don’t exactly sound like they came from a child somewhere in an African village where there may not even be a post office, children are the same are the same everywhere. This strikes home, as Emma Barron, a psychiatrist specialising in the mental health of children and adolescents, explains it in the news item. Landmark dates, she says, including birthdays and holidays like Christmas, provide structure in childhood. Amid the pandemic’s uncertainty, the December 25 anchor of Christmas is particularly important to kids this year. “Children are quite surprising in that they can adapt to many things,” Barron says. “But rhythms, rituals and things like that are an integral part of children’s mental stability.” I found this quite revealing. But the issue is not whether Santa is real, except for the ideal of magnanimity his persona signifies. The ideal he personifies has been co-opted in various cultures, including in Africa in a places like Liberia where Old Man Bayaka, the village “devil” not known for giving but for street begging, who is now conflated in Merry Christmas greeting to mean, “Please give me something nice for Christmas?” In Europe likewise, where there are various versions of Santa according to cultural tradition in the different countries. It all originates from the legend of Santa Claus which can be traced back to a fourth century monk named St Nicholas who lived in what is today Turkey. The BBC explains that the modern image of Santa Claus was created in the late 1800s by American artist Thomas Nast in a series of cartoons for Harpers Weekly magazine. It became a staple of Christmas cards and advertising images in the early 20th Century, most notably a 1930s Coca-Cola commercial, which some believe popularised his distinctive red-and-white garb. In this garb Santa can now be found on most supermarkets and shop windows on high street in every city in the world come the season to invoke goodwill and welcome customers. Merry Christmas to readers of this column, now moved to Monday from Saturday.
