Christmas is more than a month away but Operation Santa is in full swing the holidays.
The program is open now for children or families to write their wishes down for Santa to fulfill. They should be postmarked by Dec. 9, the USPS said.
Writers need to include their names, address and of course, their holiday wishes, and send them to Santa in the mail.
Santa’s address is :
Santa
123 Elf Road
North Pole, 88888
The USPS said that you should write legibly, list gifts in order of preference and be specific. For more tips, click here.
To make it a bit easier, the USPS has a series of templates ready to make the letters stand out.
Starting on Nov. 18, the letters will be available online for anyone to read and hopefully grant the wishes contained in them.
To adopt a letter, you create an account on the Operation Santa website. After you read them and select who you want to help, you buy the gifts and ship them.
Operation Santa has also partnered with Toys ‘R’ Us to put together an online catalog where you can choose the gifts and have them sent directly from “Santa’s Gift Shoppe.”
The deadline for either shipping on your own or through the online catalog is Dec. 16.
The United States Postal Service started the program 112 years ago in 1912. It was created by then Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock, when he allowed local postmasters to open letters addressed to Santa and the employees to respond on Santa’s behalf.
As the program grew, it got too big to be handled by the post office employees alone so in the 1940s everyday people chipped in to answer the letters meant for Santa.
It went digital in 2017 where people could read and adopt the mountains of letters.
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