Dear Santa: Times are tough

[LeBuick]

Looks like Santa is receiving a different kind of letter this year on the pole. Mixed with request of toys and goodies are the letters from the kids of struggling families who are on the front lines in this recession. I may contact our post office to see if we can help with some of these letters.

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2008/12/05/dear_santa_times_are_tough/

The letters are piling up with the usual Yuletide requests for Wiis, PlayStations, and $400 Lego Death Stars, laboriously written in children's block letters and sweetened with offers of cookies and promises to be good.

But this year another, more somber, kind of letter to Santa is appearing with regularity on the fourth floor of the US Post Office's South Postal Annex in Fort Point: pleas for help from the newly unemployed, the recently homeless, and from the children watching their parents sink in the recession.

"Dear Santa," a 10-year-old boy wrote. "My mother is becoming so depressed and sad because she only has money to pay the bills and buy food for us to eat. Father is in prison so mom doesn't get help."

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/new...ffice_offers_chance_to_be_Santa_s_helper.html

"My mom is very sick. She has kidney failure, so she can't do much for the family. I wish I could help her but I am stuck in this wheelchair for now," the boy had written in careful printing.