Yes, Virginia, There is a North Pole Postmark

We letter lovers all know that a postmark can be just as fun and interesting as a stamp. It can also add a certain verisimilitude to a letter which say, is supposed to be from Santa Claus. So, I was alarmed to see a twitter message last month about the USPS no longer forwarding letters to Santa to North Pole, Alaska.

"What?", I thought,"this is outrageous! How dare they?" And I went storming off through the internet trying to find more information. Here's the thing, they haven't stopped the cancellation mark at all. As far as I can tell, they'll still do the postmarking, but at the Anchorage office. The smaller North Pole office would get "700,000 or 800,000 requests a year" and it was just overwhelmed. The article is written in a way that suggests it isn't being done anywhere, prompting almost all the comments on it to be along the lines of "Socialism and Obama are ruining Christmas!"

So, in short, yes, Virginia, Santa is still postmarking letters. He's just using a different post office. All you crazy commenters [not our commenters, the ones on the linked post] need to simmer down!

EDIT: So, when I wrote this post, all of the above was true. All of the huff and puff was coming from people angry that they weren't going to let volunteers answer childrens' letters [I didn't even know they did that] because of privacy concerns. But, the USPS has reinstated the program due to public outcry. So, there's a Santa and a postmark and everything is hunky-dory.

Comments

[Virginia]

Dear Donovan:

I'm so relieved to know this. Thank you for telling me.

Sincerely,

Virginia