A military wife has shared a photo of the letter she’ll be giving her kids this Christmas, proposing alternative delivery dates for their presents from Santa.
Stephanie Lynn, from Virginia, US, wrote a Facebook post for other military and first responder families. She explained that Christmas can be a rough time when juggling shift work, on-call hours and deployments. “Normal holiday events can get quite hectic,” she wrote. “And no matter what, our amazing kids just push on through.”
This year, Lynn’s partner Brent will be working on Christmas Day, so they’ve decided to have Christmas on the morning of 24 December. “I typed up a letter from Santa Claus, just for these special kids and wanted to share it with y’all, just in case,” she wrote.
The letter, delivered “from the desk of Santa Claus”, explains that it’s only been sent to a special group of children around the world – the kids of military members and first responders (such as emergency service workers, police officers and paramedics).
“I know sometimes your mum or dad can’t be at home on Christmas Day,” it reads. “Christmas is about family, and I want your whole family to have a very special Christmas morning together.”
The letter proposes alternative delivery dates for the kids’ presents that the elves have helped organise, on the days before and after Christmas.
Within days of sharing the letter on Facebook, it had thousands of shares and comments. “Wow! This post has been shared way more than I ever expected,” Lynn wrote.
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She also made a set of new personalised letters, for pilots and flight crew, divorced families and general use – you can download these directly from her Facebook post. “Please do share far and wide,” she added. “And print them for your kids and those you know would benefit.”
Thousands of people have tagged parents in the comments and many other shared how much it means to them. “I never wanted to ruin the magic of Christmas for my toddler but this is just perfect,” one mum wrote. “I work night shifts, I’m going to use this letter!”
Another wrote: “Thank you so much for posting this! This is exactly what we needed this year to keep the magic (with some solid Santa evidence!).”