As people grow their life is based on living day to day, living thinking about the future and also thinking about everything that has been left behind, that is, in our memories. Christmas, besides being an eminently consumerist stage, is a time when the family comes together to talk about the present and also talk about the past.
That is the part that I like the most, that of remembering, that of going back to remember when we were children, of our childhood, of the happiness that was breathed in these Christmas days, 20 or 30 years ago and of the anecdotes What happened. Well, imagine the impression, surprise and happiness that Victor Bartlem should feel, when a few days ago he saw it published in the newspaper a letter written to Santa Claus by his mother, one hundred years ago.
The letter was really discovered in 1992, when the current owner of the house where Hanna Howard, Bartlem's mother lived, decided to install the central heating, wanting the chance to go through the fireplace to realize that there was a role in it dating from 1911, which was nothing more than a letter with the illusions of a little girl asking for her gifts from Santa Claus.
At that time John Byrne, the owner of the house, He decided to leave it in the same place where he had found it as a symbol of past times. He thought it was a beautiful memory of Christmas and it seemed so magical to find it in the fireplace, so many years later, that he considered that the best thing he could do was simply leave it again in "his place".
This week, when the letter turns 100, Byrne decided to bring it to light, make it public as a curiosity. He Irish Times He echoed the story and that was how Victor, the son of the author of the letter, read the story of the letter his mother had written as a child.
For him It was a real surprise that brought him very pleasant memories of his mother, who died in 1978. The reaction of the people has been almost as if they were told a magical Christmas story, so wonderful, that Bartlem himself has confessed that he has been a little overwhelmed, although he understands that it is "The Christmas spirit in which we are, is Christmas".
As a curiosity, Hannah Howard wrote in her letter that she wanted "A baby doll and a raincoat with a hood and a pair of gloves and a caramel apple and a gold penny and a long candy". A letter as extensive as those of our children today, right? And just as practically, that the girl was asking for a raincoat and gloves… when the children now will hardly ask for clothes.
