Saint Nicholas

Letter to Santa

John Duval Gluck with a St. Nick in the early 1900s

Chicken-wire window playpen (left) and plans for the Santa Claus Building (right)

(Getty)

Bird S. Coler

Georgia:

Letters-to-Santa scammer, John Duval Gluck

Episode sources:

1. “The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York” by Alex Palmer

2. “Santa Claus” (History)

3. “The New York City Origins of Santa Claus” by Rachel Walman (The New York Historical Society) 2018

4. “The 1920s Santa Claus Scam” (AARP)

5. “St. Nicholas” (Britannica) 2025

6. “The strange story of NYC’s ‘Santa Claus building’ that never was” (Curbed) 2015

7. “John Gluck: Santa Claus is Coming to Con” (Scamfluencers) 2024

8. “Santa letters: Gateway to kindness” (USPS)

9. “The Jazz Age Rise and Scandalous Fall of the Santa Claus Association” (WNYC)

10. “Santa Claus Group Under Coler’s Fire” (New York Times) 1927

11. “A Civil War Cartoonist Created the Modern Image of Santa Claus as Union Propaganda” by Lorraine Boissoneault (Smithsonian Mag) 2018

12. “American Boy Scouts” (ScoutWiki)

13. “Meet the con artist who popularized writing to Santa Claus” by Alex Palmer (New York Post) 2015

14. “John Duval Gluck” (Wikipedia)