Dear Mr. Santa Claus, My name is George and I am seven years old. I am writing this letter to thank you for giving me the Christmas gift I had asked you last year. My mama said it is important to thank people who do you a ‘favour’, which means help, and I wanted to thank you for your favour so badly! Thank you Santa! It is okay if you don’t remember my wish because you are old and may not remember much from last year and you get letters from thousands of children all over the world. I learned to count till thousand this year in school and my Social Sciences teacher showed me a globe which shows me all the countries in the world. It was so much fun! I had asked you to let my papa come back home safe last year. Everyone said he had gone to fight for the country in a far away place called Iraq. I had asked my teacher to show me Iraq and she showed it to me last January. It was so far away from my home, which is in Georgia- it spells like my name! He was gone for a long, long time. He had gone in August last year. He used to call me whenever he could he said because it was a super secret mission. Though I missed him a lot, it was cool that he could go to super secret missions. So I was okay for some months. Then, in the end of November, we couldn’t reach him anymore. He didn’t call us either so I was terrified. That is a new word I learned. He didn’t call us for six months my mama. I cried a lot those days and missed him so, so much. I missed playing Frisbee with him and cooking our special sandwiches with him and colouring the walls with him. But what I missed the most was how he sang really good songs to me before going to bed and how he cuddled with me until I fell asleep. So, I asked you to bring him back to me for Christmas. But he wasn’t back even then. That made me even sadder and I cried even more during Christmas, which made mama cry too. I felt bad for making her sad, but she was always sad without papa. But a few months later, he came back to me and mama! He was missing his left arm, which was scary for me in the beginning but I got used to it after some time. He said there was a bombing in a war and that was when he lost his arm. But that’s okay, because I have my papa back! He gets sad sometimes when he sees his left arm missing and gets scared when he hears something super loud and cries a lot at night, but I still love him loads! I wanted to thank you tonnes for giving him back to me and mama and making us happy again. I hope you have a Christmas as good as mine this year Mr. Santa! Merry Christmas! Your friend, George. P.S. I have left you extra choco chip cookies by the tree so you can give some to your reindeers too! Thank you for coming!