Every holiday season the United States Postal Service receives thousands of letters from children to Santa. Writing to Santa is a yearly tradition for a lot of families, but not every family is able to afford to give their children everything on their wishlist. This is where the Postal Service comes in with USPS Operation Santa. It started over 100 years ago by the Postmaster General so that local Postmasters could respond to the letters as Santa and deliver small gifts to children.Â
The Postal Service provides a real mailing address for Santa and the letter only requires one first-class stamp. For families that don’t know what address to send their letters to, the Postal Service will still accept letters addressed to the North Pole. All the letters are good as long as there is a return address.
Operation Santa became so successful that the postal service has allowed regular people to “adopt” a letter from a child and fulfill their Christmas wish. The letters opened up for adoption on December 4 and readers are able to adopt whichever letters touch their heart. All the information from the children and their families is kept private and so is the adopter’s information. The gifts are supposed to be from Santa so USPS does their best to keep the magic alive. USPS provides the steps to mail the presents on their website: read the letter, shop around, prep and wrap the gifts according to their guidelines, and bring the packages to the post office by December 19 so they can arrive by Christmas. Adopters are given a shipping label so no one’s privacy is exposed.
Similar to Angel Tree, kids can request anything from toys to clothes. Anyone that wants to view the letters can go to USPSOperationSanta.com. Most of the letters are handwritten by the children and are scanned and uploaded to the Operation Santa website. Reading the letters is a heartwarming experience.Â
If you want to participate in an act of service for the holidays, adopting a letter and making a child’s Christmas should be added to your list.