Just a few days ago the Three Wise Men distributed gifts among millions of Spanish children. A deep-rooted tradition that has been taking place in our country for many decades and that obeys the wish that many children expressed a few days before through letters addressed to the monarchs of the East.
Times have changed and with them, so have its protagonists. Citizenship has nothing or little to do with the people who embodied the society of a century ago: the economic situation, values, concerns... And children, of course, are not kept out of evolution either.
If we could measure how children today have changed compared to those of yesteryear, we should go to a source that would provide us with some information that is as objective as possible. And what better than the letters to the Three Wise Men with which the children expressed the concerns of those times. Unlike what some might believe, these are not only letters that contain material things and superficial values such as toys, but they demonstrate many other aspects that surround childhood and its environment.
Behind each letter there are letters, behind those letters there are wishes and behind the wishes there are values that are transmitted between parents, children and the rest of society. For this reason, it is not at all strange that the correspondence that boys and girls maintained several decades ago is the object of study by those who seek to find out how in just one hundred years the stereotypes of a community changed.
East. Monarchical state of Don Gaspar:
Most Serene Lord: With the greatest respect and reverence:
The one who signs this, a five-year-old girl, requests that your kindness and recognized affection for good children know how to reward her good behavior during the past year of 1922, with a nice wristwatch and a set of lingerie.
Talos that you hope to obtain from your generous heart. May God keep you for many years. Respectfully...
The CRAI, the Learning and Research Resource Center of the University of Barcelona, has a collection of letters to the Three Wise Men written between 1921 and 1925. It is a collection that is part of the legacy of the Chair of Ethics of Dr. Pere Bosch i Gimpera (1891-1974). A work was conducted by two contemporary archaeologists and specialists in prehistory and archeology of Catalonia and the eastern peninsula, such as Bosch i Gimpera and Lluís Pericot.
Initially, the CRAI's work was to compare these letters collected during the 1920s in schools in three Catalan provinces (Barcelona, Girona and Tarragona), with the current ones. The first, all of them impregnated by the bitter taste of the turbulent twenties. But apart from the irremediable comparison, the research promoted by the UB aims to contribute to the preservation of everything that, undoubtedly, “is part of our cultural heritage, facilitating the opening of new lines of research to the university community.” , they explain from the center.
The project, which is called "Letters to the Three Wise Men", plans to compare the two collections and investigate questions as varied as: Who were the children who wrote to the Three Wise Men a hundred years ago and who are those of today? ? And how consumerism and other economic factors affect the prominence of children and their desires.
If the contemporary letters handled by the CRAI have been provided by Catalan schools, those from a hundred years ago come from two department stores. “El Siglo” from Barcelona and “Rodríguez” from Madrid, as well as from some other Catalan town such as Terrassa. A very interesting material to study for researchers interested in popular culture and the values of childhood, which is why they came to the university to develop “studies of the psychology and character of children in Spain”, at that time. .
The evolution of the cards and their content
The CRAI recognizes that the letters of yesteryear open a wide range of dissimilar investigations. They found that the writing of the 1920s did not take into account the wooden script and that texts in very elaborate linked script were admired. Children in the past, in order to do well, even asked their parents or older siblings for help. Nowadays, personal autonomy is promoted and individual effort is valued, explains Roberta Boscaro, documentary filmmaker at CRAI's Technical Process Unit.
The Resource Center also reflects on the weight that Christian morality had and continues to have in the wishes of the little ones.
According to the CRAI, these are a few examples that tell us about the game pedagogy of each era and dolls or mini kitchens requested by those who applied as future mothers or housewives.
The most interesting thing, according to those responsible, lies in aspects such as the children's language; “before formal, prudent and even serious.” Now “informal and colloquial”. “It seems that before, a hundred years ago, more importance was given to good manners,” explains Boscaro.
Following the comparison between letter styles, the old ones contained countless formalisms typical of the time and currently some children express themselves in their letters simply with clippings from catalogs. Which also demonstrates the abundance of the resource itself. In centuries-old letters, any piece of paper was ideal to express wishes to Their Majesties, today, however, there are different types of textures, colors and qualities with which to address the Kings.
It must also be taken into account that in the past, "those who asked for gifts were the most well-off children, who even asked for gifts for the maid," comments Roberta Boscaro.
With the intention of analyzing the content of these letters in greater detail, the Resource Center invites everyone to participate in the transcription of these letters through the "transcriu-me" initiative, a collaborative project that intends to to improve access to digital content.
