Every Child Deserves a Bit of Holiday Magic!
Did you ever write a letter to Santa as a child? Did you ever get a response? I bet you can remember how excited you were when your parents handed you a letter from Santa addressed to you.
The holidays are all about bringing happiness to others and capturing a little bit of magic. The Postal Service’s “Greetings from the North Pole Post Office” program can help ensure that children’s letters to Santa are answered and returned to them with an honest-to-goodness North Pole postmark!
Here are the steps to get Greetings from the North Pole:
- Have your child write a letter to Santa and place it in an envelope addressed to: Santa Claus, North Pole.
- Later, when alone, open the envelope and write a personalized response. To save paper you can write the response on the back of your child’s letter.
- Insert the response letter into an envelope and address it to the child.
- Add the return address: SANTA, NORTH POLE, to the envelope.
- Affix a First-Class Mail stamp, such as a new Winter Berries Forever stamp to the envelope.
- Place the complete envelope into a larger envelope — preferably a Priority Mail Flat Rate envelope — with appropriate postage and address it to:
North Pole Postmark
Postmaster
4141 Postmark Drive
Anchorage, AK 99530-9998
“Greetings from the North Pole Post Office” letters must be received by the Anchorage, AK, Postmaster no later than Dec. 13. Santa’s helpers at the Postal Service will take care of the rest.
USPS Operation Santa
A separate program is in place for children who may need more than a simple greeting. If that’s the case, the USPS Operation Santa program is where to turn. Celebrating its 107th year, the program helps to bring a little joy at the holidays to deserving children. To participate in Operation Santa, please send letters to Santa’s OFFICIAL workshop address:
123 Elf Road
North Pole
88888
Wait! What? Yes! You read that correctly. This is the first time ever that Santa has allowed us to give his actual mailing address!!! We’re all pretty excited to share it with you. But he did make us promise to tell you not to try to get there from here. Even with the help of GPS you can’t find Santa’s workshop because it’s hidden to ensure that he and the rest of his elves can work throughout the year without interruption. Although, Santa does make a special exception for the Postal Service elves, because he relies on us to not only deliver thousands of letters to and from his workshop, but he also sometimes needs our help to deliver gifts as well.
This year we are expanding the Operation Santa digital program to 15 cities. By continuing to provide a digital option, we’re making it easier for anyone to bring happiness to deserving kids at the holidays. Not only are we sharing Santa’s official address, we also have a new web address for Operation Santa, USPSOperationSanta.com.
More information on USPS Operation Santa and Greetings from the North Pole Post Office can be found in our holiday newsroom.