Miracle on 22nd Street! New York Couple Mistakenly Receives Letters Addressed to Santa — and Turns It Into Act of Kindness

Jim Glaub and Dylan Parker were getting ready to spend their first Christmas living together in their Manhattan apartment on 22nd Street when their mailbox started filling up with letters addressed to Santa Claus — letters that would lead to a global giving movement. Having lived in the Chelsea apartment for nearly three years before Parker moved in, Glaub thought nothing of it when that first letter to little St. Nick arrived. He had been warned by the previous tenants that the address had been mistakenly receiving Santa’s mail for at least five years prior. “They never answered them because it was only three or four letters a year,” Glaub, 36, tells PEOPLE. “And the first two years I lived there, it was that exact thing. I’d get three letters and I didn’t really think anything of it. I was like, ‘Oh, sorry — wrong number.’ ” Redglass Pictures But that year was different. It was 2010, and the couple — who have now been married for four years — watched the letters grow with each visit from the mailman. By the time Christmas rolled around, nearly 450 letters had arrived at their doorstep. Neither Glaub nor Parker, 35, had any idea why the number of letters had suddenly spiked or how their address was chosen as the East Coast bureau of the North Pole. But there was a common thread in all the letters — they each came from families in need living in their very city. “These were our neighbors in the Bronx, Queens, Manhattan… these were our people,” Glaub says. “I just felt this need to help them.” Redglass Pictures That year, the two set out on a mission to get every letter filled — taking to social media and spreading the word about the letters amongst their family and friends. Seeing the story, filmmaker-friends Sarah Klein and Tom Mason did a short film on the pair and their cause for her production company, Redglass Pictures. It was picked up by The New York Times. They were able to get 150 letters fulfilled of the 450 they received in 2010. But for the past six years, the letters haven’t stopped. And even though Glaub and Dylan have long since moved out from their apartment rental, they’ve dedicated each holiday season to making sure the families in need who write to Santa have their wishes granted. So far, not a single letter has gone unanswered — with people from all over the country and the world swooping in to help. Courtesy of Jim Glaub and Dylan Parker The letters are mostly assigned via word of mouth — though a “Miracle on 22nd Street” Facebook group set up to help manage the distributions has greatly helped, especially since the pair are now living in London. (Glaub is in touch with the apartment’s current tenant each year to help collect the letters, and a friend locally scans each letter for recording). “It’s just so strange! It’s caused this global effort!” […]

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