In 1974, staff at Canada Post's Montreal office were noticing a considerable amount of letters addressed to Saint Nicholas coming into the postal system, and those letters were being treated as undeliverable. Since those employees did not want the writers, mostly young children, to be disappointed at the lack of response, they started answering the letters themselves. The amount of mail sent to Santa Claus increased every Christmas, up to the point that Canada Post decided to start an official Santa Claus letter-response program in 1983. Approximately one million letters come in to Santa Claus each Christmas, including from outside of Canada, and all of them are answered, in the same languages in which they are written. Canada Post introduced a special address for mail to Santa Claus, complete with its own postal code:
- SANTA CLAUS
- NORTH POLE H0H 0H0
- CANADA
- [via]
Labels: Canada, mail art, Santa Claus
Aaawwwww, that's adoribubble. Yay for Canada. Now I have to go off and hug some kittens.