Students from Lindbergh Schools and the Mehlville School District have written Santa letters that have appeared in The Call since 2007, but this year Lindbergh officials decided that students in their schools would not participate because not every child celebrates Christmas.

“We have an equity committee that has been doing a lot of really intentional work this year to ensure that all students are equally represented and reflected in all that we do,” Lindbergh Chief Communications Officer Beth Johnston said in an email. “I know the Santa letters for the Call have been a longtime tradition, but we have several students who do not celebrate Christmas, so at this time we are going to step back from asking our teachers to have students write them during class time.”

The committee itself did not have a discussion of the Santa letters. Johnston said she presented the idea to “district leadership… and we made the decision based on the work and direction that the equity committee has been working toward, to ensure that our curriculum and in-school activities are inclusive for all students.”

Students who do not celebrate Christmas have written Santa letters to The Call before. In 2009, Almir — a student from either Point or Forder elementaries — wrote, “I don’t celebrate Christmas, but I do celebrate New Year’s Eve. Instead of being at my house, I go somewhere else. It is because I am Islamic. I still have fun on Christmas. I have snowball wars with my brother and friends. That is all I do on Christmas, plus hot cocoa.”

Read this year’s letters here from Rogers and Trautwein elementaries in the Mehlville School District. Many of the students asked for a bearded dragon.