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Nov 19, 2009 4:42 pm US/Central
Santa's Letters No Longer Getting To North Pole
FORT WORTH (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
Its a story stunning anyone who has ever had santa respond to childhood letters.
Santa's elves can no longer send out mass volumes of letters from the North Pole.
And in this case, the Grinch stealing a Christmas tradition would be a convicted sex offender.
Many letters addressed to the North Pole really did go to the North Pole in years past: North Pole, Alaska. Its volunteer citizens answered the letters by the tens of thousands every year, creating a holiday tradition since the 50's.
"My kids got them," said Tammy Roschetzky, a post office visitor in Fort Worth who has fond memories of the letters. "Little personalized letters from Santa Claus. They were excited!"
But when a volunteer letter writer in Maryland was found to be a registered sex offender last year, the post office pulled in the reigns on privacy issues with the children's addresses. Now letters are assigned a computer code by the post office so volunteers can't see the addresses. That kind of computing power is not available for the real town of North Pole, Alaska. So no mass mailouts from the north pole this year.
"There's something good and kids get to get excited about something," said post office visitor Amanda Powers. "And we get to have that innocence. 'Yea! Santa's coming!' And then we get it taken away because there's always that one bad person that ruins it for everybody."
"I'd like to see them continue something without divulging the kids privacy I guess," said Jude Mansell, another post office user who received letters from Santa and who worries a tradition may disappear.
But "elves" employed by the post office do still answer letters. It just has a local postmark.
"We can say Santa has a substation!" says Powers.
"Its not going to be the same," says Roschetzky.
But there is still a way to have a letter from Santa postmarked from the north pole: its the post office resend program. But the post mark is applied in Anchorage, not North Pole, Alaska.
CBS 11 has learned local postal customers can obtain the North Pole
Postmark on a letter from Santa or on holiday greeting cards.
On a letter from Santa—
Write a letter and sign it from Santa. Place this letter into an
envelope addressed to the recipient with the return address from SANTA,
NORTH POLE. Please make sure First-Class postage is affixed to the
envelope. Place that envelope into a larger envelope, with appropriate
postage, and address the larger envelope as indicated below.
On holiday greeting cards—
Personalize greeting cards like as usual. Place the cards into their
envelopes. Address the envelopes to the recipients. Place First-Class
postage on the envelopes and include a return address. Place the
greeting cards into a larger envelope or box, with appropriate postage
and address it to:
NORTH POLE HOLIDAY POSTMARK
POSTMASTER
4141 POSTMARK DR
ANCHORAGE AK 99530-9998
The letters from Santa and the greeting cards need to be received in
Anchorage before December 15. After that date, they should be sent via
Express Mail.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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