Photo courtesy of United States Postal Service.
The Postal Service is now accepting letters for its USPS Operation Santa program. Letters must be postmarked by Dec. 10, and will be uploaded to USPSOperationSanta.com through Dec. 15 for potential adoption.
The nondenominational program is intended to help as many deserving families as possible experience a happy holiday season. Since the program began win 1912, hundreds of thousands of less-fortunate children and their families have been helped by the kindness of others who adopted their requests.
Participation is simple. All you have to do is write a letter, put it in an envelope affixed with a first-class Mail Forever stamp, and make sure you include your full return address — apartment number, directional information (i.e., E Main St, Apt 103) and ZIP Code — and send it to Santa’s official workshop address: Santa Claus, 123 Elf Road, North Pole, 88888. Letters without full return addresses or names will not be posted for adoption.
It is entirely up to the letter writer as to what appears on their wish list. But the more specific writers are with sizes, colors, styles, favorite authors, book titles, toys, etc., the better chance their wishes will be granted if their letter is adopted.
When someone writes a letter, it is opened by Santa’s elves, and for safety reasons, all personally identifiable information of the letter writer is removed (i.e., last name, address, ZIP Code) and uploaded to USPSOperationSanta.com for adoption. There is no guarantee that letters submitted to the program will be adopted.
The Postal Service has guides to help write letters on USPSOperationSanta.com and in USPS’s Holiday Newsroom.
Potential adopters, once approved, can visit USPSOperationSanta.com, read through the posted letters, pick one or more that they’d like to fulfill, and follow the directions on how to grant that special wish for a child. For security reasons, all potential adopters must be vetted through a short registration and ID verification process before they can adopt any letter. If you’ve adopted letters in the past, you must still be verified each year.
Businesses also get into the spirit of the season by creating teams to adopt letters.
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