A New Year's Wish for You

 

The most unusual letter Santa got this year

Jason Boyer, 41, and his wife Sandi wanted to help some needy family at Christmas this year and were anonymously matched with a little boy being cared for by his grandmother. The boy, whose grandfather had just passed away, sent a letter to Santa, and at the top of his wish list was a hoverboard.

 Jason and Sandi's son Hudson had also asked Santa for a hoverboard, but when he found out about the need, he wrote to Santa again and asked if his Christmas gift could be given to the other boy instead. The Boyer family did one better. They made sure both boys got a hoverboard from Santa this year.

Dancing with the mailman

 A special friendship between a three-year-old and a mail carrier has continued through the pandemic, as they keep up their daily dancing. Ava, of Portland, Oregon, looks forward every day to seeing the mailman. "She gets so excited. It's amazing," says postal carrier Ian Simon. 

Socially distanced, Ava and Simon dance it out every morning. Her dad, David Whitlow, says the interaction is even more meaningful during the pandemic. "It starts the day on the right foot," he says, no pun intended. He feels Simon has made a huge difference during this difficult time. In the eyes of those living nearby, Simon is delivering much more than mail.

 

A sweet crumb from Ottawa, Kansas

It happened in Ottawa, Kansas. The Franklin County Sheriff's Office says it all started when they began receiving service calls about a woman walking along a highway. Deputies responded several times and give the 24-year-old woman a ride to work.

Eventually they learned that she had been walking six miles to work and six miles back home to provide for her two young children. A small group of deputies got together and in a few days, with help from the community, they gathered funds to purchase a van for the woman. The sheriff's office also donated two new car seats, $200, a gift card to a grocery store, and the first year of car insurance is paid.

 

Secret Santa visits Walmart

Christmas came early to the town of Canton, Mississippi, when a generous and very secret Santa picked up the tab for more than 300 layaway tickets at the local Walmart. A donor who wishes to remain anonymous approached store management and made an offer they could not refuse.

The jolly old elf volunteered to make good on every layaway ticket they were holding for customers who had yet to pay or fully pay for their merchandise. The exact amount of the donation has not been revealed, but guesstimates are that Santa laid out a sizable chunk of change to ensure his neighbor' holidays would be merry, and a whole lot more stress free.

Grandchildren are their toy-testers

Mike and Judy Sullivan have been married 50 years. They live in southern California, and for the past seven years, the Vietnam vet and his wife have spent nearly every day in their wood shop making handmade toys to give away. Last year they spent $19,000 on supplies, and they build toys between eight and ten hours each day. Mike buys the lumber, drill bits and saws, and makes the patterns. Judy is quality control and decorator. 

The Sullivans give away many of the toys outside their home in the Coachella Valley. "We try to enforce social distancing and masking," says Mike. They will give away 1,400 free toys this Christmas, including to the Coachella Valley Rescue Mission and a church food pantry. They've mailed free toys as far as Indiana, and they even pay for the shipping, although they admit that's getting tough. "As long as I can afford it, I can send them where I can," says Mike.

 

He went down in history

 Rewind to 1939. The Great Depression was fading, and a manager at Montgomery Ward in Chicago wanted the store to create a children's book for the holidays. He tapped Robert L. May, an advertising writer, to create it, and he came back with a story about an underdog red-nosed reindeer who was at the right place at the right time. "Can't you come up with anything better?" his boss asked, but May believed in the story and got a friend from the art department to draw some sketches. Together they convinced the boss, but months into the project, May's wife died. His boss offered to transfer the reindeer project to someone else, but May refused. "I needed Rudolph now more than ever," he later wrote.

The store distributed more than 2 million copies of the book that year, but May was still living on a copywriter's salary and buried in his wife's medical bills. After WWII, Montgomery Ward's CEO, Sewell Avery, gave May the rights to Rudolph. May's brother-in-law was a songwriter, so May talked him into writing a song about Rudolph. It was picked up by none other than the singing cowboy, Gene Autry, and sold more than 25 million copies. May's family was taken care of financially through the end of his life and beyond, and as for Rudolph? Well, he went down in history.