It's been one hundred years since Annie Howard sat down and wrote a letter to Santa. She was ten years old, residing in Dublin in 1911, and likely unaware of the turmoil that was soon to explode into bloody rebellion.
Like any other girl of her time, or indeed of our own time, she wanted a baby doll. Living in Ireland, she also wanted a waterproof coat with a hood and a pair of gloves to deal with the rain.
Oh, and don't forget the candy. Little Annie asked Santa to bring her a toffee apple and a gold penny and a silver sixpence. She then tucked her letter up the chimney where it would magically make its way to Santa, and who knows but that she received the much desired gifts on the 25th of December, 1911.
That letter sat in the same spot until John Byrne was re-doing the heating in a home he'd bought in Terenure, Co. Dublin. He kept it for a charming memento of a simpler time, but made his find public as this is the one hundredth year since Hannah penned her missive.
Hannah's son Victor read about the letter in the newspaper and it's hard to imagine how shocked and surprised and delighted he must have been to gain access to his mother's view of her world as a ten-year-old child.
We never meet our parents as children, but this was as close to such an encounter as anyone could have. There is no more unique Christmas gift than that.
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