Each year, thousands of children across the country write letters to Santa Claus and send them to his workshop in the North Pole.
With help from the elves in the U.S. Postal Service, children will once again receive personalized responses to their letters from Santa Claus himself through the “Letters to Santa” program.
To ensure a response from Santa, children should write a letter and place it in an envelope addressed to “Santa Claus, North Pole,” according to USPS.
Once parents are alone, they should open the envelope and write a personalized response to their child’s letter with the return address of “Santa Claus, North Pole.”
These letters should then be put together into a single envelope, postmarked and addressed to:
North Pole Postmark
Postmaster
4141 Postmark Drive
Anchorage, AK 99530-9998
“Letters to Santa” must be received by the Anchorage, AK, postmaster no later than Dec. 15. “Santa’s helpers at the Postal Service will take care of the rest,” according to USPS.
“Letters from Santa” Tips from USPS:
- To save paper, write Santa’s response on the back of your child’s letter. If you keep them together, your child will also be able to recall what he or she wrote.
- When responding as Santa, make the response as personal as possible by highlighting your child’s accomplishments over the past year, for example, helping around the house, receiving good grades in a particular subject at school or participating in community service activities.
- This is a great activity to do at Thanksgiving that the whole family can enjoy, including parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and other caregivers.
This is not the first time the USPS has responded to children’s wish lists and letters. For more than 100 years, since 1912, the organization’s Operation Santa program has allowed community volunteers to purchase gifts and respond to children’s letters.