~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE:
History/True Crime
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Before
the charismatic John Duval Gluck, Jr. came along, letters from New
York City children to Santa Claus were destroyed, unopened, by the
U.S. Post Office. Gluck saw an opportunity, and created the Santa
Claus Association. The effort delighted the public, and for 15 years
money and gifts flowed to the only group authorized to answer Santa’s
mail. Gluck became a Jazz Age celebrity, rubbing shoulders with the
era’s movie stars and politicians, and even planned to erect a vast
Santa Claus monument in the center of Manhattan — until Gotham’s
crusading charity commissioner discovered some dark secrets in
Santa’s workshop.
The
rise and fall of the Santa Claus Association is a caper both
heartwarming and hardboiled, involving stolen art, phony Boy Scouts,
a kidnapping, pursuit by the FBI, a Coney Island bullfight, and above
all, the thrills and dangers of a wild imagination. It’s also the
larger story of how Christmas became the extravagant holiday we
celebrate today, from Santa’s early beginnings in New York to the
country’s first citywide Christmas tree and Macy’s first grand
holiday parade. The Santa Claus Man is a holiday tale with a dark
underbelly, and an essential read for lovers of Christmas stories,
true crime, and New York City history.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpt:
It’s
impossible to say who wrote the first Santa letter, but it was almost
certainly from the mythical saint, not to him.
From the
earliest conception of Santa Claus in the United States, parents used
the voice of St. Nicholas as a means of providing advice and
encouraging good behavior in their children. The earliest reference
to a Santa letter in America that I could find came from Theodore
Ledyard Cuyler, recalling his childhood in 1820s Western New York
when he “once received an autograph letter from Santa Claus, full
of good counsels.”
Fanny
Longfellow (wife of poet Henry Wadsworth) regularly wrote her
children Santa letters, commenting on their behavior over the
preceding year. “I am sorry I sometimes hear you are not so kind to
your little brother as I wish you were,” she wrote to her son
Charley on Christmas Eve 1851.
Soon
enough, children started writing back, generally placing their
letters on the fireplace, where they believed smoke would transport
the message to St. Nick.
By the
1870s, scattered reports appeared of the receipt of Santa letters by
local post offices. But with no actual fur-coated toymaker to receive
his mail, each January, the department destroyed them.
It was a
depressing business. But, officials asked, if mailmen began
delivering Santa’s letters, to which other fictional characters
would mail be shuttled?
In the
face of negative publicity, however, New York City’s postmaster
finally relented. Every year, for the entire month of December, any
approved organization could answer Santa’s mail. No one
volunteered. Then, in 1913, just as the Post Office was about to give
up, a man named John Duval Gluck stepped forward. He’d be Santa
Claus.
He was
also a con artist.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alex
Palmer is the author of The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a
Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York, called
"required reading" by the New York Post and "highly
readable" by Publishers Weekly.
Available
at:
Amazon.com
-
http://www.amazon.com/Santa-Claus-Man-Invention-Christmas/dp/1493008447/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1430324363&sr=1-7
Barnes &
Noble -
http://www.amazon.com/Santa-Claus-Man-Invention-Christmas/dp/1493008447/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1430324363&sr=1-7
IndieBound
- http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781493008445
It tells
the history of Christmas in America through the true-crime tale of a
Jazz Age hustler who founded an organization to answer children's
Santa letters -- and fuel his own dark dreams. Palmer curated an
exhibit about this Santa Claus Association for Brooklyn's City
Reliquary Museum, earning attention from the Village Voice, Time Out
New York, and inspiring a memorable segment on WNYC
(http://wny.cc/1bQIx5k).
The son
of two teachers, Palmer's love of learning and sharing surprising
stories behind familiar subjects has led him to become a
secret-history sleuth. In addition to The Santa Claus Man, he is the
author of Weird-o-pedia: The Ultimate Collection of Surprising,
Strange, and Incredibly Bizarre Facts About (Supposedly) Ordinary
Things, published in 2012 by Skyhorse Publishing. it offers up a
wealth of unexpected facts of familiar things. His first book,
Literary Miscellany: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About
Literature, takes a look at some of the more colorful aspects of
great writers and their works, and was published in 2010 by Skyhorse.
He is a
full-time freelance journalist whose work has appeared in Slate,
Rhapsody, Smithsonian, Vulture, the New York Daily News, Publishers
Weekly, and The Rumpus, among others.
See more
at www.alexpalmerwrites.com and follow him @theAlexPalmer.
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