{"id":8238,"date":"2021-12-20T11:35:54","date_gmt":"2021-12-20T10:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=20880"},"modified":"2021-12-20T11:54:11","modified_gmt":"2021-12-20T10:54:11","slug":"the-con-man-who-saved-christmas","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/the-con-man-who-saved-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"The con man who saved Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Emma Mason\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Monday, 20 December 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Every year throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as certain as snowflakes fell onto the city streets, a growing mountain of Santa letters ended up at post offices across America. Thanks to a change in Post Office Department policy in 1911, these letters began to be answered by charity groups approved by the local postmaster. But in New York City, the largest city in the country, Santa<\/a> was nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n

\u201cSanta Claus is Tardy Saint,\u201d read the front page of The Sun<\/em> a week before Christmas Eve. \u201cMail Men Disown Santa,\u201d read the Tribune<\/em>. Two years went by with New York City\u2019s Santa letters ending up at the dead letter office [a facility within a postal system where undeliverable mail is dealt with], and as the days of December 1913 ticked away, it began to look like Santa would again be a no-show.<\/p>\n

But on 8 December, New York City\u2019s postmaster, Edward M Morgan, received a call about a clever customs broker with a carefully conceived system for receiving, verifying and responding to children\u2019s Christmas wishes. Despite the postmaster\u2019s workload in the midst of the holiday season \u2013 or perhaps because he had too much on his mind to take extra time vetting the one man who had stepped forward to play Santa \u2013 Morgan quickly granted the man\u2019s request. New York City now had a Santa Claus, the newspapers joyfully reported. However, it would turn out that the city had got more than it bargained for.<\/p>\n

The Santa Claus Association<\/h3>\n

The customs broker-turned-Santa was John Duval Gluck, Jr \u2013 a bachelor with no children of his own. While Gluck\u2019s imagination and abundant energy added a sense of fancy to his day-to-day life, it also created restlessness in him and a hunger to do something greater with his life. He read about the change in the US Post Office Department policy, and believed his fundraising background \u2013 and work investigating customs claims \u2013 provided him with the unique skills to effectively manage Santa\u2019s mail.<\/p>\n

Gluck\u2019s idea, the Santa Claus Association, worked strictly as a bottom-up operation. New Yorkers of any means could take a letter \u2013 or 100 of them if they liked \u2013 and personally see that the child received his or her gift. The donors (and the children hopeful enough to write to Santa in the first place), did the real work. Gluck\u2019s association just helped to connect them. From the association\u2019s office in the back of a Manhattan steakhouse, Gluck told reporters that this approach ensured the city\u2019s generosity \u201cis flung wide with a generous hand, rather than doled out with the smugness of self-satisfied benevolence\u201d.<\/p>\n

\""An\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
An envelope containing a letter to Santa, answered by the Santa Claus Association. (Photo by Gluck Scrapbooks)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

Donors from all walks of life \u2013 from poor parents who could barely afford to pay for their own children\u2019s gifts, to business magnates and even businessman William H Vanderbilt (who chipped in $10 to help the group) \u2013 contributed to the efforts. Volunteers from the city\u2019s elite societies offered their time to help open, sort and respond to the thousands of letters sent in by the children of New York. A typical missive received by the group in its first year read:<\/p>\n

Dear Santa Claus\u2028<\/em><\/p>\n

I am a little girl 11 years old. I have one little brother and three little sisters beside myself. My papa is sick with rheumatism and cannot work. So dear Santa I am writing this letter to you. I hope dear Santa you will not forget us on Christmas.<\/em><\/p>\n