Editor’s note: This is part 5 of a Christmas week series from local writer Peggy Keener on Christmas carols with research taken from a presentation by Sweet Reads owner Lisa Deyo.

Read part 1 here: The pilot is wearing a red suit

Read part 2 here: Karloff couldn’t sing like Grinch in classic show

Read part 3 here: Where is Robert Goulet to pray for peace?

Read part 4 here: Songs of old St. Nick

I now tell you the true story of a customs broker named John Duval Gluck, Jr. What? You don’t know him? Well, neither did I! You see, John Gluck was the man who in 1913 founded the Santa Claus Association whose sole purpose was to answer the letters that the children of New York City wrote to Santa.

Gluck ran the organization for fifteen years in which time the association received an abundance of gifts and donations from a willing number of philanthropic New Yorkers. In the center of the happy commotion was Gluck, a Jazz Age celebrity who turned the mythical Santa into a reality for many poor youngsters.

You see, every year throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries (like snowflakes piling up on city streets), a growing mountain of Santa letters mounded up in post offices across America. Perhaps you, yourself, wrote one. I know I did.

Thanks to a new post office policy established in 1911, these letters began to be answered by charitable groups that were approved by the postal system. This worked for many places across the U.S., but alas, Santa was no where to be found in the Big Apple.

The Sun declared on its front page that “Santa Claus Is a Tardy Saint,” while the Tribune claimed that “Mail Men Disown Santa!”

Two years went by as the city’s Santa letters ended up in a dead letter office. Once again it looked like Santa Claus would be a no-show.

Then as time was ticking down to Dec. 25, the city postmaster received a call describing how a clever customs broker had conceived of a system for receiving, verifying and responding to children’s Christmas wishes.  Because the postmaster was so overwhelmed by the growing mountain of other seasonal mail, he gratefully granted the man’s request.

Gluck, a bachelor with no children, had an abundant imagination and the energy to make it all happen. He also had a calling to do something great with his life. New Yorkers of means responded taking on a single letter (or a hundred letters), and personally seeing to it that the children received what their hearts desired. With so many donors doing the work, Gluck declared that New York’s kindness “is flung wide with a generous hand, rather than doled out with the smug expiation of self-satisfied benevolence.”

Folks from all walks of life beginning with poor parents who could barely afford to buy their own children gifts to business magnates (even William H. Vanderbilt chipped in $10 !!! … (come on, Willy, couldn’t you have done better than that?), contributed to the effort.

A typical missive went like this: Dear Santa Claus, I am a little 11 year old girl. I have one brother and three sisters all younger than me. My papa is sick with rheumatism and cannot work. So, dear Santa, I am writing to you. Please do not forget us this Christmas!”

In the first year, the group astonishingly answered the requests of 28,000 children. Following this first successful year, the Santa Claus Association quickly became a notable institution with Gluck fawning in front of the cameras at every opportunity.

In the 15 years that followed, Gluck’s ambitions grew. He tapped other cities to follow suit while he pleaded for celebrities such as John Barrymore and Mary Pickford to help promote the cause. He even drew up plans for a Santa Claus building to be constructed in the middle of Manhattan.

As the number of children’s Santa letters increased, so did Gluck’s requests for money. He began by asking for more funds to cover the two-cent stamps for the letters, then for hundreds of dollars to purchase the gifts, and finally for hundreds of thousands of dollars to raise the building. The patriotic passion of the volunteers kept them in a trusting mood, no figure creating more confidence in them than Santa Claus.

Eventually this caught the attention of the city’s commissioner of public welfare who one day exposed the dubious Gluck for what he was. A con man! A Christmas cheat! A Santa Claws with greedy paws! Obviously playing such a monumental figure was more than one man could handle before his ego and greed got the best of what had begun as a loving, caring idea.

So now, dear readers, it at last becomes clear. This may well be the explanation for why you — after writing a dozen letters to Santa — did not get that pony!

Bah humbug, Mr. Gluck!