By Elizabeth Wulfhorst
For 110 years the United States Postal Service (USPS) has been answering the call – the one to Santa, that is. Throughout the ages, children have pleaded their case by letter to the big man in red, hoping for a particular toy, a new game or even a baby brother or pony. But what happens to those missives – most simply addressed to Santa Claus, North Pole – once they are signed, sealed, stamped and guided through the mail slot by tiny hands?
“Postal Employees first started to notice that there were a lot of letters to Santa coming through the mail stream” in the early 1900s, explained Gail M. Branham, strategic communications specialist for the U.S. Postal Service, whose service area includes New Jersey.
“They thought, ‘How can we answer these letters?’”
In 1912, then-Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock authorized postal employees and even citizens to respond to the letters, a simple act the wishes of tens of thousands of children each year – Operation Santa.
“At first it was postal employees, seeing that there was a need there to keep the spirit of the holidays alive for kids,” Branham said.
By the 1940s, with the volume of mail increasing, the USPS invited charities and corporations to help provide written responses and small gifts, according to the USPS website. But as the requests to Santa grew, the program had to evolve to continue answering as many letters as possible.
A trial online version of Operation Santa launched in New York City in 2017. Prior to that, “before it was fully digital, people would come the ones that they wanted,” Branham said, which meant many letters went unanswered each year.
For the next two years, the program expanded to include more cities across the country.
Letters from specific locations were included on the Operation Santa website and only people in those locations could adopt them. Packages had to be shipped from one designated post office in each location.
In 2020 the program went nationwide and the number of answered letters exploded. In 2018, 3,733 letters were posted to the website with an equal number of responses; in 2021 that number jumped to 27,146. “Often times we have a clear site at the end of the program,” Branham said, which is the goal.
Now that the USPS has an exact address for Santa – 123 Elf Road, North Pole 88888 – it is easier to make sure he receives every letter. But “as long as there’s a stamp on the envelope and it’s addressed to some variation of Santa,” it will be delivered, said Branham. Any letter to Santa from anywhere in the United States and Puerto Rico gets delivered to a central location for processing. When asked where the letters actually go, Branham said, “the North Pole,” of course.
“A lot of the letters appeal to the child in us. They’re not necessarily letters that, you know, act of writing these letters that is a huge part of childhood and a huge part of the holidays.”
Employees working at Operation Santa review all the letters received and determine if there is any way to satisfy the child’s request.
“If there’s a way they can be posted and fulfilled then they will get posted,” Branham said, even though “fulfilling” doesn’t have to mean sending a gift. Letters that don’t request a specific item are still posted to the Operation Santa Website. “If a child is just saying ‘Merry Christmas, Santa. I love you. I’ve been good all year long,’ that letter gets posted” and the adopter choosing that one receives a kit with a template instructing them how to respond with a “letter from Santa.”
Branham said some letters are just not able to be practically fulfilled. “There was a letter I remember, back at the height of COVID, where a child was asking for a cure. They said ‘I don’t want anything, I just want a cure for COVID.'”
Adoption registration opened Nov. 14 this year, with adoptions beginning Nov. 28. Letters must be chosen and gifts shipped by Dec. 19. To become an adopter, register at uspsoperationsanta.com, get verified and peruse the posted letters. After choosing one, it’s a matter of finding the perfect gift and shipping it from almost any post office, including most in the Two River area. USPS makes sure the gift arrives from Santa before Christmas. Adopters can choose an individual letter or multiple ones from the same family (which are grouped together on the website).
For those little ones writing letters to Santa Claus, Dec. 12 is the deadline for participation in this year’s program.
“How it started and how it has evolved and then 110 years later, is really pretty phenomenal,” Branham said.
The article originally appeared in the November 24 – 30, 2022 print edition of The Two River Times.
