Is There Really a Santa Claus?

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Nov 16, 2012, 11:34 ET

Kids Will Truly Believe When Santa Writes Back

WASHINGTON , Nov. 16, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The U.S. Postal Service is helping keep the enchantment of Santa Claus alive with its "Letters From Santa" program. "Letters From Santa" allows a parent, grandparent or any person in a child's life to mail a letter to their child "From Santa," postmarked from the North Pole.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121116/DC15129)

Here's how "Letters From Santa" works:

1. Write a letter to your child from Santa Claus and sign it "From Santa."

2. Insert the letter into an envelope addressed to your child with the return address:

SANTA, NORTH POLE.

3. Ensure a First-Class Mail stamp is affixed to the envelope.

4. Place the envelope into a larger envelope, with appropriate postage, and address the larger envelope to:

NORTH POLE POSTMARK
POSTMASTER
4141 POSTMARK DR
ANCHORAGE AK 99530-9998

5. Your letter "From Santa" will be mailed back to your child, postmarked from the North Pole.

"Letters From Santa" must be mailed to the Anchorage, AK, postmaster no later than Dec. 10, 2012. Santa's helpers in Anchorage will take care of the rest.

The personalized letters that parents send to their children via the "Letters From Santa" program is different from the historical "Operation Santa" program. In "Operation Santa," the Postal Service facilitates the matching of customers with letters written to Santa from needy children. Participants in "Operation Santa" help fulfill a child's dream with a gift and a response letter from Santa. (Customers are not provided the child's address in the "Operation Santa" program.) The "Letters From Santa" program helps parents fulfill the dreams of their own children.

The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation — 151 million residences, businesses and Post Office™ Boxes. The Postal Service™ receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. With 32,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com®, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $65 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world's mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 35th in the 2011 Fortune 500. In 2011, Oxford Strategic Consulting ranked the U.S. Postal Service number one in overall service performance of the posts in the top 20 wealthiest nations in the world. Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency for six years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.

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SOURCE U.S. Postal Service