Every November like clockwork, the letters start pouring in. Each begins “Dear Santa” and all are addressed to an apartment on 22nd Street in Manhattan. Jim Glaub and husband Dylan Parker tell Us Weekly it’s a mystery as to how their home became known as St. Nick’s, but the couple — who now reside in London — have worked tirelessly for the past six years to ensure that not a single note goes unanswered.
“If we bring them back to the post office, are all the kids getting a letter back with ‘Return to Sender?’ I didn’t want that to happen,” Glaub told the New York Times in 2010, the year they received nearly 400 wish lists.
A majority of the requests come from low-income children in New York City asking not for video games or toys, but for necessities such as winter coats and shoes. “We got one from a kid who asked for a bed because he was sleeping on the couch and springs were hurting his back,” Glaub, 36, tells Us. “I started crying.”
But getting choked up while sifting through the mail is a regular occurrence for Glaub and his husband of four years. “Can you please send a turkey cause last year we had only soup,” wrote one boy, while another pleaded: “Please Santa Claus give me a blanket because it’s very cold in the winter.”
To fulfill the wish lists, Glaub and Parker, 35, rely on volunteers from the “Miracle on 22nd Street” Facebook group, which has surpassed 4,000 members thanks to social media and a film by Redglass Pictures about The Letter Project. Raves Glaub: “We’ve had people from Germany, London, Guatemala and India helping.”
To this day, the couple are have no idea how their address got out there. “There are many theories,” Glaub tells Us. “It’s a mystery. We think it might have been an address that someone published in a school district newsletter.”
Glaub and Parker hope others will continue to get involved. “It requires that we put ourselves second momentarily to help someone unknown to us and without the usual gratification of seeing the outcome or receiving thanks,” Parker tells Us “The act of giving has to be enough.”
