Is Santa Real? Letters to Santa Part II
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- Written by: Joanne Wallenstein
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We opened another group of the 500 letters sent to Santa from Scarsdale kids and found some more amusing lists:
A young boy informed Santa that they celebrate Hanukkah, not Christmas, at his house but added his lists of requests nonetheless.
Another family divided their letter into three segments – for mom, dad and the dog to add their requests to the child’s. In additional to a few Lego’s for the letter writer, mom asked for a plum-colored bag and a nice scarf!
Aiden from Fox Meadow reported “I helped by mom do housework, and helped my teacher in math class, adding, “sometimes even teaching the class.”
A Quaker Ride boy reported “that he recycled,” and vowed to "shout less" and say, “thank you more.”
Three and half year-old Sophie said, “After my nap I am going to drop off this note and Santa is going to say “Hey” who dropped off this note!”
On behalf of her two dogs Itty and Sherman a girl said they “would love some peace and quiet and new dog bed.”
One boy wrote in large black block type, “Dear Santa this year I tride to do my best at being good even though I did some stuff that I shouldn’t do and I might have did some stuff that isint necessary but just remember that I’m trying to do my best …. So for Christmas I want …..”
Charlotte requested an AI robot bunny and a “cleaning robot” for her mom. But is Santa real? She added a P.S .to her letter saying, “Please tell me if you are Mom or Dad. Write it in a letter.”
(We will have another 300+ letters to read, so if anyone wants to stop by, let us know.)
Happy New Year!
Scarsdale Kids Mail 500 Letters to Santa
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- Written by: Joanne Wallenstein
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Santa was in big demand this week in Scarsdale. Kids had deposited a record 500 letters in four mailboxes placed around the Village and he had to collect them, read them and figure out how to fulfill so many Christmas wishes.
The mail was generated in response to the Scarsdale Recreation Department’s Letters to Santa program, and busy elves at the Recreation Department sent responses from Santa to 450 of the 500 letters that included return addresses.
What do kids want this year? Electronic games, dolls, fart blasters, Lego, Air Pods, speakers, slime, remote control trucks, skates, squishmallows, drones, stuffies, make-up and more.
A nine year-old boy said, “I’ve been pretty good this year except I got banned from video games but I know better now.” What did he want from Santa? “Some kind of video game.”
Some looked beyond the material and asked for things that cannot be wrapped up in a box.
One girl asked to “be a smarter kid, to be more successful, to be prettier, to have a best friend, to know if anyone has a crush on her and requested “lots of snow days.” She also wrote a quiz for Santa, “to see if you real,” asking if he knew her favorite color, favorite animal, her favorite sport and the name of her first friend.
Another wrote, “My only Christmas wish is to achieve my goals and have a wonderful new year with my loved ones.”
A six year-old boy decided to interview Santa, before submitting his list for a remote control airplane and a remote control garbage truck for his little brother.
He asked:
1. How did you become Santa?
2. Where did you get your reindeers?
3. How do you go down the chimney
4. Where did you get your sleigh?
A recent immigrant told St. Nick, “U.S. is a new country for me, and everything is new to me too, like new home, new school and new fried also English.But I’m push myself very hard. I made new friend, I join in the school band. I am very excited. I will working harder in 2026. He asked for a German Shepherd puppy and basketball shoes."
A generous soul from Drake Road asked for a puppy but ended her note saying, “But also I would really like for the kids who can’t have presents to have extra toys on Christmas.”
And one who said “I am too old for toys,” asked for world peace, and said. “I hope that all kids, no matter what religion, even if they’re atheist, has a positive holiday season although it might not be perfect.”
From the sampling of letters we read, it’s clear we’re raising some very good kids in Scarsdale. Let’s hope they all find what they want under the tree.
Merry merry.
Creating Festive Holiday Vibes at Home
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- Written by: Wendy MacMillan
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Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, or maybe even “Festivus,” this time of year tends to be filled with holiday gatherings and family get-togethers. And there is no better way to bring out the nostalgic holiday vibes, than to create spaces for friends and family that feel special and festive. Some may look for decorating inspiration in magazines or maybe social media sites, but here in Scarsdale we are lucky to have a local floral designer, Amy Sapirstein of Eye Candy Florals, to turn to for some no-fuss decor ideas that will be sure to wow.
From tablescapes and centerpieces to garlands adorning your entryways or fireplaces, Amy offers simple holiday decorating tips using natural-elements and shares accessible ideas to make your space feel cozy, festive and calm this Holiday Season:
Use fresh greenery throughout
Fresh evergreen garland on your mantels or tables
Add Pinecones in a glass vessel or tucked into your greenery
Include simple white twinkle lights (LED battery operated is great) for a festive ambiance
Make festive natural garlands
String cranberries or dried orange slices, mixed with greenery
Making popcorn garland is a fun way to get your kids involved
Candles
Seasonal smelling candles like pine and cinnamon can fill your space with nostalgic scents of the holidays.
Use LED candles on timers that will illuminate your windows once the sun goes down keeping things simple and consistent.
Focus decorating efforts on main areas of your space
Entry tables
Front facing windows
Mantels in main living space
Simple decor in your kitchen where you spend ALOT of time
Forage
Use what you have in your own backyard and involve your kids to collect materials
Collect simple branches
Pinecones
Greenery
Berry branches
Cozy things up
Cozy throw blankets and pillows in neutral tones
Candles for a glow
Display Wooden bowls, trays, etc
Make your own ornaments
Fill clear ornaments shapes with natural elements
Get your kids involved and provide fun festive materials for them to create their own
Cut paper snowflakes
Paint pinecones or decorate with glitter!
For more inspiration head over to Amy’s website Eye Candy Florals or follow her on instagram.
WRT Delivers 650 Thanksgiving Meals
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Over 300 volunteers of all ages united last week at Westchester Reform Temple to prepare and deliver over 650 Thanksgiving meals to individuals and families throughout Westchester County.
The effort—known locally as WRT Delivers Thanksgiving—brought volunteers together to bake, cook, assemble, and personally deliver meals to partner organizations including HOPE Community Services, Meals on Main Street, WJCS, White Plains Family Medical Center, Neighbors Link, and the Salvation Army. These partnerships ensure that the meals reach community members who need them most during the holiday season.
This year’s program once again highlighted the impact that collective action can have on addressing food insecurity and spreading holiday warmth. From children decorating Thanksgiving cards to adults preparing turkeys and side dishes, every volunteer played an important role in making the initiative a success.
This event was planned for the 4th year in a row by WRT’s Director of Social Impact and Community Engagement, Sharon Stiefel. A special thank you goes to Amanda Glattstein, WRT’s resident chef and kitchen manager extraordinaire, and all of the fantastic volunteers whose unshakable enthusiasm helped make this operation such a success!
“WRT Delivers Thanksgiving is one of our most cherished new traditions,” Sharon said. “It reflects the heart of our community—showing up, giving back, and ensuring that hundreds of people in need can experience the comfort and joy of a holiday meal.”
For more information about WRT community service initiatives or to learn how to get involved, please contact Sharon Stiefel at 914-723-7727.
Obsessions Beyond Their Phones: Device Fair This Weekend Showcases Alternatives to iPhones
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(Guest Essay by Ariana Green)
“My kids need addictions — the good kind,” a father of four told me at a party in Hastings a few weekends ago.
He explained how his high school daughter had become a ranked competitive swimmer, his sons devoted hours to their basketball team, and his fourth was exploring several passions. “Without hours devoted to all of this, I know they’d be bothering me for a smartphone,” he said woefully.
Last spring, Lisa Berman and I started IRL Scarsdale for just this reason. We are a chapter of IRL NY, a nonprofit now active across five Westchester towns, dedicated to “taking childhood offline and into real life.” We know our kids have so much to discover. We believe that as parents we can help our children find and develop their interests, not just by signing them up for extra-curricular activities, but also by working together as a community to remove the distraction of early access to social media and phones with apps, texting and web browsing.
The Alternative Device Fair this Saturday 11/22 from 10 AM to 12:30 PM at Scarsdale Public Library is a free event showcasing some of the devices on the market designed for families who want connectivity for their kids, but not at the expense of having time for in-person pursuits and spending meaningful time together.
This event is a small start to a much bigger movement that we know Scarsdale parents are ready to lead. We can and must band together to set healthy technology norms for our kids. In the process we are going to help every child find their strengths — as friends, athletes, scientists, writers, artists, or whatever they dream to be.
With that in mind, I wanted to share my personal experience, which I believe will help parents as they head into this weekend’s fair. I won’t be buying a device on Saturday because I want to wait until my kids are older, but I am eager to learn about these devices from reps flying to us from throughout the country. My oldest child is in fourth grade, and so far, I’m taking several approaches to keeping her off of devices.
Strategy Number One: Unabashed + Unsubtle Indoctrination
At the airport last year, all three of my kids came close to me at once, eyebrows up, pointing and whispering some version of: “Mommy, she looks no older than seven, and she has her own iPhone, that’s too young!”
I shushed them a bit — no public shaming is ever called for — and recalled what my daughter would tell me in second and third grade: “Mommy, some of my friends have a text group, but I have no interest in joining, it sounds stressful!”
She had of course heard my complaints about my own group chats — some through school classes or other affinity groups — that would ping me when I didn’t care to be pinged, and I remember feeling self-satisfied that my perspectives were filtering down. (Note: Per below, self-satisfaction is a dangerous emotion to release on the parenting seesaw, not least because it is fleeting.)
A couple of years before Jonathan Haidt’s instant bestseller The Anxious Generation came out, I started to talk directly to my kids about technology and why our family has the approach we have, mostly because I became worried hearing from friends with older kids.
If the topic of social media came up at the dinner table, I wouldn’t shy away from it: “Your friend’s mom told me last week that her fifth grader finds Snapchat makes her sad because the kids turn on their locations, so each kid knows where everyone is. If a few of them go to Haagen-Dazs after school, the ones who weren’t invited feel hurt and left out.”
To that story, my then eight-year-old daughter replied, “But isn’t it normal that not everyone goes everywhere all together every time?” And then, before she could take another breath, amended: “Wait, that would actually hurt my feelings. It’s really better not to know.”
I’d be lying if the story ended here. Fast forward a couple years to last night, after I drove a carpool during which my daughter’s friend talked about the two text groups she accesses through an iPad. We arrived home, and my daughter delayed eating dinner to write me a two-page letter asking me to consider giving her an iPad, or at least to pilot a text group with her friends on my phone. Her main point: Mom, I support your movement, but until your social change takes hold, I’m being left out.
I’ll see this afternoon if she has already forgotten about her missive from last night, but of course the older she gets, the harder it gets to be the odd one out. That’s why parents can come together to agree to wait longer on text groups and the rest.
Ask any cult leader — indoctrination works best on the young. My cult is that of Device Suspicious, and I am a proud (if sometimes questioned) leader.
Strategy Number Two: My New Dinner Party Friend Called Them “Good Addictions”
My thoughts on how to structure afternoons changes by the school year. When my close-in-age kids were little and I decided to scale back from a very busy work life to structure my schedule so I had time with them, I was inclined towards cozy and communal time playing together at playgrounds, reading at the library and going on excursions. As my kids have gotten further into elementary school, they have real interests and talents, and they want to work hard at them.
I get it. I was a kid who spent six days per week training several hours a day (by middle school) in a pre-professional program at a major ballet company, and boy did I love it. It made me disciplined with my schoolwork, but more importantly, years before I read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Flow, I knew what “flow” was because I felt it every day while dancing. For me, it was good to be busy with something I loved after school.
Not every kid wants to be occupied, and that is completely fine. This year, I unglamorously eat some of my weekday dinners in the car, the dance studio waiting room or at the basketball court. My middle child wants to play what feels like almost every sport, and my oldest wants to dance five days per week. So we’re trying it.
Every year, we make it up as parents, see what our schedules can handle, how we weigh the benefits of extra-curriculars with the costs of divided time and delaying bedtimes.
Strategy Number Three: Deviceless Creative/Physical Free Play
Despite this being our heaviest extra-curricular year to date, my son was not happy yesterday afternoon when I told him I had to write a quick editorial so we wouldn’t be able to spend 45 minutes of unstructured time tossing a football together at the playground. I was sad, too; now that fewer kids congregate, I look forward to my “recess,” running and passing while talking about the day with one son as the other does monkey bars and plays with other little ones.
In an ideal world, more friends would reliably congregate with us so my son could play a real football game — and they used to in warmer weather — but it’s never as many kids as I’d think would, a chicken-or-the-egg question as it pertains to the need for all the structured activities.
Scholars and personal experience tell us that devices rob us and our kids of time to play freely, and make our attention spans shorter. I try small ways to live more slowly with my kids and to find joy in just playing. I love watching them with friends or with each other as they make up plays or do engaging projects.
When their friends come for play dates, they know by now that we don’t have video games or iPads (we do have Kindle Fires for airplane rides or sick days) but we do have a giant bounce castle, ping-pong, an ample board game collection, art supplies aplenty and a yard to play sports. This weekend, at the Device Fair, we will be decorating a Device Box, a repository for each of us to place our devices.
Strategy Number Four: Tell Them Policies Change
When I joined YouTube Premium during the pandemic to get Spanish language content for my kids, the benefit of having an educational component was soon outweighed by the constant stream of garbage that came on afterward. If I wasn’t hovering (and wasn’t that the point?), who knows what they were going to see.
When I took YouTube away not long afterward, I was not surprised to hear, “Why? Not fair!”
My answer? “I’ve gathered more information by watching what this shows you and what it does to you, and I’ve changed what I think about it.”
For parents with older kids who already have devices, it’s okay to say to a younger child: “I’m sorry, I understand you are sad that you won’t get a smartphone as early as your older sister did, but let me tell you why I made this decision: There is more research now, and I’m convinced I’m doing the best thing for you. Plus, I’m talking to your friends’ parents, and many of us are doing this together.”
There is so much you can cite for them. I attended this month’s Scarsdale PTC Technology Committee event on digital predators, during which Laura Forbes, Bureau Chief and Internet Safety Coordinator at the Westchester County D.A.’s office discussed how even so-called child-friendly apps, like Snapchat and Discord, have predators.
Detective Chris Moleski, of the Scarsdale Police Department, who teaches a class at the Middle School, discussed how our local children have been victims of sextortion and cyberbullying. Forbes said some cases before them have involved games including Roblox, with game predation being in some ways scarier because it's under the guise of cute characters.
Panelists pointed out how it becomes very difficult to monitor kids’ phones when something that looks like a calculator app can be an encrypted photo app. Kids are generally more tech savvy than their parents.
You can tell your kids that it isn’t just parental policies that change. Laws change in the race to keep up. When I collaborated with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Technology and Civil Liberties Division in 2011, we were working to update privacy legislation that had been on the books since the 1980s, when VHS’s were the cutting edge technology. Parents can and should move quicker.
Denmark recently pushed the age for social media to fifteen. Earlier this month, Caroline Stage, Denmark’s minister for digital affairs told the Associated Press: “The amount of time they spend online — the amount of violence, self-harm that they are exposed to online — is simply too great a risk for our children.”
I’ve noticed that the younger siblings of iPhone toters truly understand some of the pitfalls of technology absorption. I’ve heard my kids’ friends complain about how their older siblings used to play with them and have fun with them on family trips but turned into device-obsessed kids who ignore their families to chase likes and scroll.
Strategy Number Five: Engage with IRL Scarsdale, the School Board and School Administration
IRL Scarsdale brings parents together to support each other in navigating technology and kids. We want to facilitate parents informing their friends about the many reasons to come together to set new norms. Our website has a yearly pledge so that parents can renew their commitments to delay social media and smart devices each year (and beyond eighth grade, when Wait Until 8th ends).
Today I attended a coffee with members of Scarsdale’s School Board, open to all residents. Parents are regularly invited to ask questions about how our schools are approaching technology. I asked the Board to encourage the powers that be to issue evidence-based guidance to teachers for a more uniform and best practices-based approach to device time and device use, both at school and at home with school devices. It seems a heavy burden to put on teachers to figure it out for themselves, and the noticeable inconsistency is difficult for students and parents.
We can all show up to School Board meetings to plan for a future we want for our kids. On the academic front, for me that is a future that prioritizes critical thinking, creative thinking and the ability to spend focused time absorbing literature or working through problem sets.
IRL Scarsdale welcomes volunteers to create programming and help us on our events and outreach. We want all of our kids to grow up without having to perform digitally for peers. We want all of our kids to get to experience a childhood that is calm, with minimal friend drama and good sleep. There is so much to gain when we lose the devices.
Ariana Green’s writing has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, Popular Science and Vogue.com, among other publications. She has been a journalist on a couple of continents and a tropical island, and an attorney for tech companies in Manhattan. Get in touch at Scarsdale@WeAreIRL.org.
