Seems like your little one’s letters to Santa might not make it to the North Pole this year.
The United States Postal Service has suspended its 55 year “Operation Santa” program that sends children’s letters, addressed to Santa Claus in the North Pole listing their Christmas wishes, to North Pole, Alaska, where volunteers answer them, and mail them back to children.
Last year, a postal worker in Maryland recognized an Operation Santa volunteer as a registered sex offender. The postal worker reported the volunteer before they could answer an children’s letters, but the situation was a big enough incident that the USPS has become more strict with the Santa letter programs all over the nation.
The Postal Service started asking volunteers for identification in 2006, but more recently, the agency briefly suspended the Operation Santa program last year in New York and Chicago, and now keeps children’s families information private, including names and addresses. Instead, the USPS replaces sensitive information with codes that match computerized addresses known only to the post office, which can be time consuming, so some post offices are opting out.
The North Pole workers (people, not elves) are upset they are being penalized from something that happened on the opposite coast.
North Pole Mayor Santa Claus Doug Issacson realizes the importance of shielding information in this day and age, but is upset they just found out about the change. “It’s Grinchlike that the Postal Service never informed all the little elves before the fact,” he said. Wow, he really takes this North Pole thing seriously.
I don’t know, usually I’m an “okay, everyone just lighten up and quit pandering to the worst-case scenario mind frame that ruins fun for everyone” kind of person when it comes to this kind of stuff, but when children are involved and are possibly given access to an open line of communication with a sex offender, I take pause. Especially since we live in a time where you have to shred your junk mail so no one cleans out your bank account, I just don’t think the restrictions are all that unreasonable.
Will your children be sending letters to Santa this year?
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