Merry Christmas
Thought you might enjoy reading some Dear Santa letters from newspapers from long ago. It only takes a moment, using google to find newspapers for the 1800’s and early 1900’s that published Dear Santa letters.
For example, open a web browser to the google main page and enter the following search:
“dear santa claus” 1913 site:news.google.com/newspapers
This will search the google newspaper archive for articles that have both “dear santa claus” and “1913”
Below are a few examples from different years:
——————————————————————————————————————–
——————————————————————————————————————–
Dear Santa 1913 Lewiston Maine
——————————————————————————————————————–
Dear Santa 1932 Florence Alabama
——————————————————————————————————————–
Santa Claus was a thin man – 1951 Ludington Michigan Daily News
Google news Search Tips:
Unfortunately several years ago google removed a very helpful date specific search feature so you have to be creative and use several different techniques to get specific results. For the Santa Claus exercise I suggested the simplest technique which is to to include the year along with our search term “Dear Santa Claus”
Step 1:
Open a web browser window linked to the google main search page.
Step 2:
Enter the following text in he search box and press enter
“dear santa claus” 1913 site:news.google.com/newspapers
Step 3:
Review the results. Using this simple google search technique we will get newspaper articles written in 1913 as well as articles written in other years that happen to mention both 1913 and our search term.
The search results are shown below. The newspaper date is shown within the search results for each item. For example the first entry has dat=19131218 indicating the article was written December 18, 1913.
Lower on the list of results there is an entry showing dat=19081226 indicating this article was written December 26, 1908.
This simple google search method helpful for a project like this but is the least precise technique. There are more precise techniques which allow you to ensure the date range meets your criteria but they are slightly trickier.
