NEEDY CHILDREN LOVE SANTA AND THE ELVES

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Welcome to SantaSearch, a not-for-profit dedicated group of compassionate, caring volunteers who touch the hearts of children and adults by bringing the joy of the Christmas season.
Celebrating our 9th year online, our new site is full of many enhanced and exciting new features including our special project called "Operation Santa Search" - a site dedicated to supporting needy children and families throughout the holiday season.

http://www.SantaSearch.org

2005 SantaSearch.org Press Release:

The 2005 season is underway, being invited into homes around the globe via the Internets largest Christmas portal, specializing in touching the lives and hearts of children big and small.

Over the past nine years, the volunteer team of Internet Elves has helped Santa personally reply to tens of thousands of letters.
Each child with a valid email address receives a special, unique and magical letter from the big guy himself!


With a whirlwind of updating and improvements, this ninth year at SantaSearch.org will prove to be the best yet.
What is even more special?
All information, sections and services at SantaSearch.org are provided absolutely free of charge

1996 saw the opening of SantaSearch.com with fewer than a couple hundred children stopping in to enjoy the thrill of a letter from Santa.
A 1997 postal strike in Canada created a booming surge in the amount of letters and has continued to grow yearly in its popularity.
Now each year, the millions of visitors find the site from every means known to modern society.
Internet links, word of mouth, television and radio coverage, magazines and newspapers all attribute to the sites continuous growth in recognition.
That recognition is from both a heart felt thank you from a child’s parent, to awards including USA Today, Golden Web, Education World, Education Planet, Cyber-Teddy’s and numerous others.

Writing Santa a letter isn’t the only item the site offers.
SantaSearch.org is proud to have one of the largest Christmas music collections, editorials on how various communities and countries celebrate the holidays and even include Christmas tree safety tips.
Over a thousand stories, poems and humorous anecdotes await the Christmas lovers of the world.

Even with all that is available, the greatest thrill for each elf of SantaSearch continues to be the reaching out and touching the hearts of children!
Unfortunately some children and adults do not get a Merry Christmas.
There again, we try to make the difference.
From helping a little girl who simply requested a doll for her baby sister and some firewood to heat their home, to the little boy whose parents wrote requesting Santa help them with transportation their child needed for medical care, our team of volunteers jumps to the task and makes us proud.

The biggest and one of the more important additions this year is a comprehensive resource for those needing a helping hand to find a place locally they can seek assistance from including food banks and Salvation Armies.

You are never too young, or too old, to write to Santa Claus!

Believe in the magic.
Merry Christmas One and All!!!
Share some MAGIC this Christmas... with a letter from Santa Claus!
http://www.santasearch.org/letters.asp?To=1

 

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Christmas 2006 Bump...

Christmas 2006 Bump...


HO-HO-HO! Merry Christmas 2006

"And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so?
It came without ribbons. It came without tags.
It came without packages, boxes or bags.
And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before.
What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store.
What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more."

-Dr. Seuss-
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Share some MAGIC this Christmas... with a letter from Santa Claus!

...the volunteer team of Internet Elves has helped Santa personally reply to tens of thousands of letters.
Each child with a valid email address receives a special, unique and magical letter from the big guy himself!

"Operation Santa Search" - a site dedicated to supporting needy children and families throughout the holiday season.
All information, sections and services at SantaSearch.org are provided absolutely free of charge.

 

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Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

(This was originally published in The New York Sun in 1897.)

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old.
Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.”
Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
-Virginia O’Hanlon-

Virginia, your little friends are wrong.
They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age.
They do not believe except for what they can see.
They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds.
All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little.
In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.
Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus!
It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias.
There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence.
We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight.
The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies.
You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove?
Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus.
The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.
Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there.
Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart.
Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond.
Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever.

A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
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Cool stuff IMB, never heard of this before!

 

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Santa's snail mail address...

Santa's snail mail address...



Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Santy, Jolly Old Elf, Santa Klaus or simply Santa, is a gift-giving icon who distributes presents to sleeping children and adults who have been "good" all year; traditionally during the night of December 24, Christmas Eve.

The popular American form Santa Claus originated as a mispronunciation of Dutch Sinterklaas, which is a contracted form of Sint Nicolaas (Saint Nicholas).

Father Christmas is a well-loved figure in many countries and predates the "Santa Claus" character.
"Father Christmas" is similar in many ways, though the two have quite different origins. Using "Santa" in places that predominantly call him "Father Christmas" is often viewed as an Americanism and is quite rare, although they are generally regarded as the same character.

Father Christmas is also present instead of "Santa" in Afghanistan ("Baba Chaghaloo"), Albania ("Babadimri"), Armenia ("Gaghant Baba"), Brazil ("Papai Noel"), Bulgaria ("Dyado Koleda"), Chile (Viejo Pascuero), Denmark ("Julemanden"), Egypt ("Papa Noël"), Finland ("Joulupukki"), France and French Canada ("le Père Noël"), Germany ("Weihnachtsmann" or "Nikolaus"),Greece "Άγιος Βασίλης-Άyos Vasílis" Hungary ("Mikulás"), Iran ("Baba Noel"), Ireland ("Daidí na Nollaig"), Italy ("Babbo Natale"), Lithuania ("Kalėdų Senelis"), Malta ("San Niklaw"), Mexico ("El Niñito Dios"), Norway ("Julenissen"), Poland ("Święty Mikołaj"), Portugal ("Pai Natal"), Romania ("Moş Crăciun"), Russia ("Ded Moroz"), Scottish Highlands ("Daidaín na Nollaig"), Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina ("Deda Mraz"), South Africa ("Vader Kersfees"), Spain and some of Spanish-speaking Latin America ("Papá Noel" or "San Nicolás" ), Sweden ("Jultomten"), Turkey ("Noel Baba"), and the United Kingdom ("Father Christmas").

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Writing letters to Santa Claus has been a Christmas tradition for children for many years.
These letters normally contain a wishlist of toys and assertions of good behavior.
Some social scientists have found that boys and girls write different types of letters.
Girls generally write longer but more polite lists and express the nature of Christmas more in their letters than in letters written by boys.
Girls also request gifts for other people on a more frequent basis.

Many postal services allow children to send letters to Santa Claus pleading their good behavior and requesting gifts; these letters may be answered by postal workers or other volunteers.
Canada Post has a special postal code for letters to Santa Claus, and since 1982 over 13,000 Canadian postal workers have volunteered to write responses.
His address is: Santa Claus, North Pole, Canada, H0H 0H0
(This postal code, in which zeroes are used for the letter "O" is consistent with the alternating letter-number format of all Canadian postal codes.) Sometimes children's charities answer letters in poorer communities or from children's hospitals in order to give them presents that they would not otherwise receive.

In Britain it is tradition to burn the Christmas letters on the fire so that they would be magically transported by the wind to the North Pole.
However, this tradition is dying out in modern times with few people having true open fires in their homes.

Through the years Santa Claus of Finland has received over eight million letters.
He gets over 600,000 letters every year from over 150 countries.
Children from Great Britain, Poland and Japan are the busiest writers.
The Finnish Santa Claus lives in Korvatunturi but Santa's Official Post Office is situated in Rovaniemi at the Arctic circle.
His address is this: Santa Claus, Santa Claus Village, FIN-96930 Arctic Circle, Finland.

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In 1955, a Sears Roebuck store in Colorado Springs, Colorado, gave children a number to call a "Santa hotline".
The number was mistyped and children called the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) on Christmas Eve instead.
The Director of Operations, Col. Harry Shoup, received the first call for Santa and responded by telling children that there were signs on the radar that Santa was indeed heading south from North Pole.
In 1958, Canada and the United States jointly created the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) and together tracked Santa Claus for children of North America that year and ever since.
This tracking can now be done by children via the Internet and NORAD's website.
Many local television stations in the United States and Canada likewise track Santa Claus in their own metropolitan areas through the stations' meteorologists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus_rituals

 

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Merry Christmas 2007

Merry Christmas 2007

CHRISTMAS-CUSTOMS

A look at Christmastime customs...and where they originated .

Busy with last-minute Christmas shopping, you may not realize that Christmas gifts are a comparatively recent custom in the United States.

In the early days of the nation, gifts were exchanged on New Year's Day - not Christmas.

December 25th was a special day of worship...a religious holiday and nothing else.

But around the mid-1800s, gift-giving at Christmas became popular. It's been growing ever since, until today...well, just look at the crowds in the stores across the country. Millions of people are loaded down with Christmas packages for other people. So Christmas giving certainly is here to stay.

Christmas cards didn't appear in the United States until the early 1900s. The first American card manufacturer was a German named Louis Prang of Roxbury, Massachusetts. And there's irony to this fact.

It seems Massachusetts is the only state in the nation which once outlawed Christmas. Actually, Massachusetts wasn't a state but rather a British colony at the time. It abolished Christmas observance for 22 years...from 1659 to 1681. Anyone who didn't show up for work on Christmas Day was fined five shillings. Massachusetts didn't make Christmas a legal holiday until 1885.

Then there's the mistletoe tradition. What's now a yuletide license for kissing used to be crushed and fermented into an intoxicating liquor by pagan tribes. The Norsemen regarded mistletoe as a sacred berry with great powers of healing.

The custom of hanging Christmas stockings originated in Holland, where the children used their shoes to collect gifts. The wooden shoes were parked by the fireplace to be filled by their patron saint...St. Nicholas.

 

[Stoner4Life]

I hope the holiday season and beyond find everyone
feeling kind and all of your needs being met and more.