From 1952 to 2008, children in Deerfield had an opportunity to write letters to Santa Claus and, after some time, a letter from the big man himself would be sent back to the child.

Now, decades later after many of the letters were likely forgotten, a number of those families who took time together to write are getting a special Christmas gift of memories years in the making.

Over the last several weeks, parents and their now-grown children who wrote letters during the period of 1963 to 1994 have been getting knocks on their door, as resident and local historian Peter Thomas is delivering digitized packets of the letters those families wrote all those years ago.

“I thought it’d be a nice thing to do … it reaches out to the community and lifts spirits,” Thomas said at his home last week with a box of yet-to-be delivered packets. He noted that the gift of memories fits the theme of the holiday season: “It’s a time to remember.”

Thomas, who grew up in Deerfield and returned to the community in 2014, has spent countless hours scanning each of the 564 letters to Santa that have come into his possession and creating packets to hand off to the families that still live in town. The original letters, as well as their digital copies, have been sent to the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association (PVMA) to be preserved. About 30 of the letters are also hanging in the Old Deerfield Post Office, according to Thomas.

South Deerfield’s Santa

The letters to Santa were a long-running tradition through the South Deerfield Post Office from 1952 to 2008 and, as many Deerfield stories through the decades do, it traces back to Betty Hollingsworth, who was a pillar of the community throughout her life (she passed away in 2016).

In a 2006 video interview with Ken Schoen, owner of Schoen Books in South Deerfield, Hollingsworth said the practice started when she was working at Frontier Regional School and the police chief stopped into the office with a letter to Santa, saying “somebody needs to answer this letter.” From there, Hollingsworth said “word started to spread” and soon a dedicated box for letters to Santa was set up at the Post Office.

“I had my own typewriter. I used to type in a red ink and I was very anonymous in doing this,” Hollingsworth said in the interview with Schoen. “I would not promise the child anything, especially some of these letters were a page long with, ‘I want, I want, I wants.’ I tried to suggest to them that being with their parents and doing good things and being a good child was very important, as opposed to getting a lot of gifts.”

During the 56 years in which she wrote letters back to Deerfield children, she said few people in town knew who was writing them. She added it “wasn’t a large number of letters,” but she sometimes received up to 50 in a year and would respond to them with some words, as well as a Santa stamp and Christmas-styled letterhead.

“It’s something I enjoyed doing very much,” Hollingsworth said. “It was a pleasure to read some of those letters from those children and then try to give an appropriate response to them.”

Schoen’s hourlong interview with Hollingsworth, as well as two other interviews with her, can be found on the town website at bit.ly/4gugKdu. She speaks about the letters to Santa at approximately the one hour mark in the video titled, “Betty’s Memories of Her Family, Career and Life.”

Deliveries of memories

While the origin of the letters is known, Thomas, as well as several other of his peers in town, are unsure of how he came into possession of them. Schoen said he believes the Historical Commission had them – he served at one point – before the current Chair John Nove delivered them to PVMA. Nove, however, said he knows of the letters, but doesn’t believe they were ever in his hands.

Thomas, who co-chaired the town’s 350th Anniversary Committee, said he thinks someone dropped them off at his door at some point in the last several years to have them prepared for the 350th, as “a lot of stuff landed on my doorstep.”

Finally, Chris Harris, Hollingsworth’s nephew, said he distinctly remembers packing up items, including the letters to Santa, at his aunt’s house because family and community members were making an “overall effort to save” the documents Hollingsworth collected over the years, but he isn’t sure how the letters made it to Thomas.

Regardless of how Thomas came across the letters, he said the delivery of the packets has been a heartwarming and sometimes emotional experience for everyone.

“I delivered about 20 of them yesterday and it hit a chord,” Thomas said, joking that while the kids’ wishes were included in the content of the letters, you end up finding “mothers write a lot of these” alongside their children. “Nobody thought they would ever see these again.”

Thomas said the letters are a chance to look back in time and see what children of those decades were asking for. There are the obvious items, such as Barbie or American Girl dolls, or a He-Man action figure. There was also one child who said they had enough toys, so they asked Santa to “please give my gifts to kids in need.”

In a fun anecdote that could only happen in a small agricultural community like Deerfield, two children who ended up becoming farmers in town asked Santa for a John Deere tractor and a manure spreader.

For Peter James, the out-of-the-blue gift was a wonderful surprise to receive and his son was “absolutely floored when we sent him a copy of what he had done as a kid.”

“It was so surprising and great. We treasure the Christmas messages that our son had sent to Santa,” James said. “We thank Peter profusely. I thought he did a wonderful job.”

Another recipient was Annette Pfannebecker, who received the letters her children wrote decades ago. She said she was “delighted” to get the gift, adding it was a wonderful Christmas idea.

“I was deeply touched to receive these letters and memories. Santa came early this year and he looks like Peter Thomas,” Pfannebecker said, adding that her children asked for an American Girl doll, a Barbie car, a CD player and clothes. “It felt like an experience of the spirit of the holidays in practice.”

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com.