Dear Editor,

I was so disappointed to read the letters to Santa this year in the Idaho Enterprise. In fact, I only read my grandkids letters and only just read the list of what they wanted. I usually read many of the children’s letters.

Computers have helped our lives to be more efficient. And most of our communication now is email. But I believe letters to Santa for Christmas should be more than just a form letter where they can list three things they want to get.

I hope that next year that whoever makes the decision about letters to Santa might turn back the page and have the kids write a letter to Santa by hand and let them say whatever they want in their own words.

I realize that this will be a lot more work and then the letters must be transcribed to the computer. The result will be incorrect grammar and some misspelled words (and please leave those in) but much more enjoyable to read.

I hope if you do this in the future that it won’t just be another job you need to get done as fast as possible but look at the results and see what fills the purpose of letters to Santa in the best way, not the most efficient.

Ken Moss

From the Editor:  

We at the office thought that Ken did a very good job of explaining something that we had all felt.  Over the past few years, we have spent the weeks before Christmas laughing about some of the funnier things that the kids have said, as well as arguing about what some of the words might actually be.  We agree with Mr. Moss that there is something about the free-form naturalness of the responses that gets lost in a form.  The whole process is a big undertaking, but we’ll speak with the school district and see if there is any way we can help with the process to bring back the fully formed letters in their natural state.  Thank you to Ken Moss for putting that into words!