14 DAY TRIAL // Before we were grown-ups (in every sense of the word), we still believed in Santa Claus and some of us even sent him letters to the North Pole. Kids in Norway, it seems, still do that every year.
The Daily Mail says the Norwegian postal office receives an estimated 30,000 letters a year destined to the jolly old fellow who brings presents on Christmas night.
Aside from the fact that this is a huge number, especially given that kids these days could probably contact Santa easier via other channels (e-mail seems the most convenient option), the letters in themselves make for quite an amazing read, the tab says.
Some of them are very funny, while some are, well, childish in the demands they make from Santa. Others contain requests that not even the most compliant of parents could fulfill, like the return of a deceased parent or a toy that's been lost for years.
Other kids, though, don't write to ask for things, but to try and find out things about Santa himself, like what he does the rest of the year, how he makes the sleigh fly and whether he knows other “languages” than “Ho ho ho.”
The letters are published in full in “Dear Santa” by Birger Sivertsen, now out on book shelves, the British publication says.
File this under “funniest”: Elsie would like Santa to make it so that she can eat sausage at dinner all year round, while Violet says she doesn't want to have “holes” in her teeth so that she can eat as much candy as she wants.
Ellen says, “I want ducks with no teeth,” adding that she's willing to negotiate on that if it's too hard a task for Santa. “PS: I'll take geese if it's a hard task – but remember, no teeth!” she writes.
“Could you make me a lot prettier than my friend Sabrina? That's my biggest and only wish!” Diana writes.
Cicilia, like so many other kids in the world, would like a pet – not just any pet, though, but one of those adorable piglets and only on the condition Santa himself talks to her mom about keeping it.
“Do you have baby pigs in store? If I can have a baby pig from you, that's what I wish for – but you have to sort it out with Mum,” she writes. Double the challenge for Santa.
File this under “awkward:” one kid asks Santa to send Mrs. Santa instead of coming himself because, he says, he's afraid of him.
A more forward-thinking Callum would like Santa's job when he's done with it, while another boy wants to know whether Santa ever changes clothes and, more importantly, if he ever washes.
Sonny, it seems, is afraid Santa is encouraging in illicit tendencies. “When you give us money, do you print it yourself? Isn't it fake money which is against the law?” he writes.
Of course, there are also questions about Santa's ability to know which kid has been good and which naughty for the past year, whether he keeps all the children's names on a computer and, if so, what software he uses for it, and funny requests for presents in “advance” for next year from children who admit they haven't been good.
For more excerpts from kids' funniest letters to Santa, see the Mail piece here.