Children’s letters to Santa Claus are an important source of information for understanding how the “magic of the holiday season” unfolds.
In 1978, Clément Fontaine analyzed, for an article by Press, 2,582 letters from Quebec addressed to Santa Claus and to which Canada Post had deigned to respond. The standard letter read something like this: “Hello, Santa Claus! I work much better than before. My mother is very happy with my newsletter. I am 8 years old and my name is Maryse. I want a doll called Thumbelina. I promise you that I will improve my driving at school and at home. ”
More than 30 years later, in a study of 40,000 emails written to the attention of Santa Claus on the website of the French Post Office, the researcher Claire Roederer had reconstituted, by using the most frequent words, a kind of ” letter type “. However, it strangely resembles Maryse’s letter written three decades earlier: “Hello, dear Santa Claus. I hope you are well. My name is Léa and I am 6 years old, I was good this year with my dad and my mom, I did a good job at school. I would like you to bring me these gifts: a Barbie doll, a game for DS, and a touch pad. ”
What does this stereotypical language teach us about the spirit of the Christmas party?
Consumer education
The letters to Santa Claus collected everywhere (whether in Quebec, France, Australia, England, the United States or Chile) betray a real consumer education.
First, they teach children to discern what they really want, weighing the advantages and disadvantages of their requests, to ensure their choices. Although in extreme cases some children want up to 50 gifts, most are more reasonable, without being frugal. In letters to Santa Claus, the average number of gifts requested is around six or seven.
Faced with the immensity of what is offered to them by department stores and online sites, children must therefore learn to be informed and judicious young consumers.
Second, children know their rewards are conditional on their behavior the rest of the year, although the insistence on being good has little real impact, as the more rowdy children rarely get punished. The letters mention the extent to which the signatories have shown hard work, discipline and obedience, all qualities which should serve them later in order to become docile and productive citizens.
Finally, in their letter, the children associate the happiness of the most important holiday of the year with family life, of course, but above all with consumption. On the one hand, a small proportion of the toys mentioned in the letters are of educational significance. On the other hand, the majority of the gifts requested are identified with a brand, to the point where one can argue that, seen through the letters addressed to Santa Claus, the Christmas party mostly resembles a festival of shopping for toys. branded (in France, half of the letters mention at least one of the 10 biggest brands, including Playmobil, Barbie and Lego).
In letters, general wishes (to be happy, etc.) and altruistic dreams (world peace, etc.) are very rare. The children ask for specific material gifts which will end up in a box, under the tree.
We know that the gender identity of young people is built through the purchase of toys. Even today, consumption is strongly gendered: boys ask Santa for manly figurines (Power Rangers, etc.) and girls, dolls (Barbie, etc.). But above all, it is the identity as consumer and consumer that is built through the act of writing to Santa Claus. To be happy is to receive a mountain of gifts. The child who, ideally, should not need anything at Christmas (this feast taking place in abundance), wants everything and wants everything: his joy will not be total until he is “spoiled”.
Hyperconsumption and waste
Even today, nothing seems too beautiful or too expensive to please children. As Christmas approaches, toy counters take on paramount importance in all department stores. On the Web, the offer seems endless.
The frenzied spending to which we indulge is spectacular. According to the International Toy Industry Council, toy sales will reach nearly $ 2.5 billion in Canada in 2020. Almost half of all toy sales occur during the winter holiday season.
We can wonder about this spending madness when we know that, according to some surveys, 7 out of 10 toys are no longer used 8 months after their purchase and that millions and millions of toys (abandoned or broken) are thrown in the trash every year.
Certainly, the winter solstice has, since the most remote times, represented a moment of festivities and bombance to counterbalance the cold and the darkness of winter, but its outbursts have today taken a mercantile turn. and materialist which forces us to question the consequences of hyperconsumption.
The considerable expenses of the Holiday season are justified by the desire to provide children with a moment of deep joy and pure magic, away from the trials of a productivist society. The paradox is that this effort takes place by investing even more the universe of the consumer society. Also, the party seems above all to confirm in the hearts of children that happiness is due not only to the possession of material things, but to excess and materialistic overflows. Without doubt there is better to teach on this day …
To read on December 27: “How to keep ‘the taste for truth’ when the information rains? “