For the past three years, English teacher Ashley Snider has helped bring Santa Claus to hundreds of kids across the country through her Letters from Santa project. This creative writing assignment tasks high school students with writing personalized letters to a real child who has made it on the “Nice List,” all from St. Nick himself.
While this may seem like a simple task, the project is far more complicated in scope. Snider starts preparing for the letters far before any Christmas music is heard on the radio. Before Thanksgiving break, Snider sends out a Google Form to Davie County staff. It quickly spreads as relatives, friends, and parents fill out on behalf of a child they believe has earned a letter from Santa. The form has many questions, from what the child wants for Christmas to what they do on a day-to-day basis, or even messages encouraging good behavior.
“Parents or family members or guardians or friends who are filling out the form will say ‘make sure to tell them to be nice to their siblings,’ or ‘Make sure to tell them to eat more than macaroni and cheese,’” Snider laughs.
The Letters from Santa Project started out quite small, with only a select few of Snider’s students partaking in it. In its second year, the project grew even larger, leaving Snider with just under 600 entries in her inbox. To help meet the demand, she had invited several other English teachers to the letter-writing extravaganza in the library, but quantity quickly outweighed quality as the entries kept coming in.
“It was chaotic, and it was very stressful, and I was burned out by the end of it,” Snider says. “I did have just a few emails that came to me over the holidays that were disappointing. Like ‘this letter never came’ or ‘this letter arrived after Christmas,’ and I was just very upset that it did not meet my expectations.”
After some deep reflection on the “chaos” of the previous year, Snider made the decision to keep this year’s project under her direct supervision. That way, she could keep track of each letter and make sure each kid with an entry received the best possible letter in perfect time.
Snider maintains that the project’s value has something to offer for everyone involved. She recalls one moment from her second year directing the project in particular.
“I remember specifically [Kathy] Edminson’s class that she had—there were seniors in that class that were never at school at all. It seemed like they were just hanging on until graduation,” Snider says. “I had several of those kids who wanted to write more letters and would come and ask to do more of the stamping of the wax seal. I remember thinking what a good thing this is for kids that don’t often feel like they have anything to do here that is of value.”
Out of all of the complexities and intricacies that are involved in this assignment, Snider finds one of the best parts to be reading about the kids.
“I love seeing the individuality of what these kids are into and what makes them special and what makes them unique, and being able to be an encouraging voice to continue to exude that love and positivity for them.”
Many of her students feel similarly, including senior Tevan Hainesworth, who found himself laughing at the entry he received.
“My kid actually asked for a vacuum cleaner,” Hainesworth says. “And I thought that was so cute and so sweet ‘cause, [the] little girl just wants to vacuum the floor.”
His classmate, senior Mary Jordan, has completed this project twice now, and she recalls the joy it has brought her each time, especially when she was able to see the reactions of the kids she wrote to in a video compiled by Snider.
“It was really cool to see the video reaction of the little girl,” Jordan says. “It was like she got to experience that magic joy, and I contributed to that. And it just felt really good. It contributed to my Christmas magic, too, a little bit.”
Despite the smaller sample of recipients, Snider admits that this year had its own challenges. She noticed a trend of apathy in some of her students, with a handful not putting in any effort at all. She says that while it was disappointing to see those sorts of reactions to the project, she acknowledges that not everyone celebrates Christmas in the same way. And for some, Christmas isn’t filled with any joy at all.
“Not all of my students experienced that magic. Not all of them experienced the nostalgia of walking down and seeing evidence of Santa. Or, even worse, that their holidays could have been filled with trauma.” Snider says. “So, for those students, it’s more challenging, I think, to try and create the magic that they never experienced themselves.”
Above all else, Snider stands by the fact that this project has nothing to do with receiving and everything to do with creating. She believes that contributing to and spreading joy to others “whether they deserve it or not,” is the spirit of the season, and by extension, the Letters from Santa Project.
“Being able to tap into the universal human experience, being able to tap into another person’s world and get the mirrors and windows in their lives and all of those things, I want people to embrace it.”
