The Chimney Sweeper

 

Last year around Christmas time I featured a video about a couple who, for some inextricable reason, kept receiving hundreds upon hundreds of letters addressed to Santa.  It’s quite a fascinating story and if you haven’t seen it then take a couple of minutes and watch it.  (DO IT!!)

This year’s bizarre letter to Santa story, courtesy of io9, comes to us from our friends across the pond in Dublin, Ireland.  Per the Irish Times:

It may have been slightly scorched over the years but a letter to Santa written 100 years ago, which was later discovered in a Dublin fireplace, has the magic of Christmas written all over it.

 

On Christmas Eve 1911, a brother and sister, who signed their names, “A or H Howard”, penned their personally designed letter to Santa with their requests for gifts and a good luck message at their home in Oaklands Terrace, Terenure (or Terurnure, as the children spelled it) in Dublin. They placed it in the chimney of the fireplace in the front bedroom so that Santa would see it as he made his way into the Howard household in the early hours of the morning.

The letter was discovered by the house’s current occupant, John Byrne, when he was installing central heating in 1992. […] Ownership of the house changed over the decades, with the Byrne family moving there in 1961, but the letter survived. “At that time, the fireplaces were made of brick with a shelf on either side,” said John Byrne who works in the building industry. “The letter was found on one of the shelves.”

The letter remained remarkably intact given the passage of time and was only slightly burned from fires set in the house over the years.

Does this mean there’s still hope for that Teddy Ruxspin I wanted when I was four?!?!?!?!

 

Artist: Benjamin Britten and Dietrich* Fischer-Dieskau / Album: Songs and Proverbs of William Blake

*Interesting music nerd/pop-culture reference.  Rain (Dwight from The Office) Wilson’s actual middle name is “Dietrich” because his parents were ardent opera lovers.