This December, Student Senate Team Love — including senators Canyon Love, Megan Streit, Jack Bermel and Samara Suwyn — organized the 2025 Letters to Santa event, a project in which Senate receives handwritten letters by students addressed to Santa from Buchanan and Palmer Elementary Schools. Calvin students, staff and faculty are then invited to grab a letter, and with a $25 spending limit, go buy a gift that was wished for by a student. Gifts are due to the Senate office by Dec. 12 and will be delivered to the elementary schools on Dec. 15. Parents of the students will be able to give the gifts to their children on Christmas morning. 

Streit, a sophomore studying secondary education and social studies, informed Chimes that in the 2024-25 school year, Senate collected 70 letters, and every single student received a gift. So, this year, Senate collected 180 letters, and all of the letters had been taken by students within days, with wrapped gifts beginning to pile in Senate’s office. 

Streit introduced Letters to Santa at Calvin for the first time in the 2024-25 school year. According to Streit, her high school did a similar event, giving her the inspiration to continue to do so coming into college. When asked what made her want to bring the Letters to Santa project to Calvin, Streit said, “Christmas can be a really stressful time for families that … are on the poverty line. And part of Calvin’s mission is to live wholeheartedly, and to be able to do that outside of campus I think is really cool.”

According to Streit, college is a very self-centered time, where students are worried about grades, classes, friends and jobs, and this is one thing that students are able to do for someone else. 

The gifts from Letters to Santa go to students who are in lower-income families, Streit told Chimes, and she said that this event can help “families to know that … there’s people in the area that genuinely care about them and are looking out for them.” Streit highlighted that part of the Christian faith is looking out for those in your community even if you never meet them, like the students at Buchanan and Palmer.

Streit said that without Letters to Santa, students at Buchanan and Palmer might have no presents to open on Christmas morning. 

Love, a junior studying financial planning and team leader of Team Love, views Letters to Santa as an opportunity to provide where there’s a need in the community, saying, “We can meet that need and just do something good, and in the spirit of giving as well.” Love stated that, from a Christian perspective, everything we have isn’t truly ours; it all belongs to God, and Letters to Santa is a way to live out our calling to be stewards of God’s creation and people.

Love told Chimes, “There is an intimacy with the Spirit and an intimacy of knowing who He is, knowing how much He gave for us, that we can step into and experience when we give ourselves.” He emphasized that through giving, we can see the heart of our Savior, saying that we get to “know the love and sacrifice of Jesus in a deeper way” when we give.

Sophia Fenech, a sophomore studying accounting, participated in Letters to Santa in both 2024 and 2025. Fenech hopes that these young students are able to receive a “little bit of hope in the joy of Christmas” through the gifts provided through the Letters to Santa project. 

When asked what it means for Calvin students to step into a role that helps the local community rather than just the campus community, Fenech stated, “On campus, we can really get into our own lives … it can be easy to forget that the outside world exists.” Letters to Santa helps Calvin students do something small for someone else, and acts as a reminder that there are other people in different stages of life outside of campus, according to Fenech. 

Fenech acknowledges that those who participate will likely never actually meet the students they are buying gifts for, but that it’s a “good exercise in helping those you don’t know.” Fenech also believes that Calvin’s call to be agents of renewal “asks us to see where there’s a need in our community and the greater world, and then to step into that need and fill that spot,” and programs like this equip students to put that into practice. 

Emma Wallenburg, a sophomore studying computer science and French, views Letters to Santa as a way to give back to the community “in a way that honors Jesus.” Wallenburg has hopes that, in giving to young kids, it in turn teaches them to give, and that the giving keeps going. 

Wallenburg related the service enacted in the Letters to Santa program to Calvin’s annual Streetfest tradition during Welcome Week in which everyone goes out into the community to serve. Wallenburg believes that such service is a good way to “further God’s kingdom.” Wallenburg admires that Senate works not only to serve the campus, but also the surrounding communities. 

Wallenburg referenced Matthew 5:40, which states, “And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well,” as a verse that calls for generosity, which in turn grows God’s kingdom. Wallenburg loves “to be a part of a community that will help the rest of our [surrounding] community,” and a community that lives out the generosity that God calls us into.

For many at Calvin, Letters to Santa has become a simple way to step outside campus life and respond to a need in the surrounding community. As the gifts are delivered, the project offers one more opportunity for students to put Calvin’s mission of thinking deeply, acting justly and living wholeheartedly as Christ’s agents of renewal in the world into practice beyond campus.