Santa Left my Daughter a Letter.

Santa left my daughter a letter this year:

Dear Louise's Daughter,

I hope you enjoy your presents that I have brought you this year because you have been such a good girl. Please continue to listen to your parents and play nicely with all of your friends this year so that next year I may also have the privilege of visiting your house.

Also please take the time to make some new friends and be kind to those who do not have as many friends as you do. It is very important that you realize how fortunate that you are to receive gifts from your Mommy and Daddy. There are many children in the world whose parents do not have enough money to buy them presents.

I hope that this year you donate a few of your toys to those children who are less fortunate than you so that they may share some of the joy that you have when you play with your toys. That would make me very happy.

Your Friend Santa.

At first she was confused and wondered why Santa had written her a letter but then she thought it was pretty neat.

Santa had decided to to this because we really believe in charity in our house and thought this would be a good way to help my daughter realize how fortunate she was to receive as many gifts as she did. We've also been struggling with convincing her to donate her old toys which is something we feel very strongly about so we thought if Santa asked her to do it it might help.

At first she was really stressed out thinking that she was going to have to give all of her new toys away right away but after we talked to her and explained that she had all year and she could choose which ones she felt a bit better about it.

We taped the letter to the wall of her bedroom and will refer to it periodically through the year and hopefully by next Christmas she will have embraced the spirit of giving which we feel is so important.

Now all we have to do is find a charity where we can donate the toys. I'd like to find a place where she could physically walk into the building and hand her toys to someone who would say thank-you. I have a few places in mind so that will be one of my projects over the next little while.