Canadian kids can still mail a letter to Santa

I have a lot of blogs and websites in my feed reader, and most of them are from the States. That’s just sort of how these things go, and I do keep Torontoist and BlogTO logged in not only because I like them, but also so that I can be assured at least SOME Canadian content in the 2-300 messages that pop up per day.

One of the big stories in the U.S. last week, the non-comics ones anyway, was that The U.S. Postal Service was discontinuing their letters-to-Santa program, where kids could write letters to Santa Claus and volunteers would get together and write back to the kids on Santa’s behalf. It was a nice program, but they found that a registered sex offender in Maryland was one of the people writing back the letters, and even though no personal information was included anywhere in the letters from the kids, OH NOES SEX OFFENDER and so the whole program was shut down, nationwide. But this isn’t a rant about public hysteria, this is a rant about how Canada Post Is Pretty Awesome, Sometimes.

You see, in Canada, you can send a letter to Santa by doing the following:

1. Put it in an envelope. (Make sure there’s a return-address)
2. Write “Santa Claus, North Pole, H0H0H0″ on it.
3. Drop it in any mailbox.

No specific address, no stamp, done and done. And Santa will write back to you in a week or two.

It’s a great program, one that Canada Post has been running for years, and while a kid might not get the same level of personalized response from Santa or his helpers, they do get to participate in the magic of Christmas, which is pretty good.

Further to that, anyone in the world can actually e-mail Santa Claus with their Christmas wishes and get a letter back. Check out “Santa’s Corner” at the Canada Post website: http://www.canadapost.ca/dec/santa/default-e.asp.

My brother and I always wrote out Christmas wish lists, for the first few years of our young lives this took the form of these sorts of letters to Santa. I remember the year my brother got his response back from Santa a full week before I did (I was fairly upset about this, I recall). I remember the year that I didn’t get a response at all… my Mom scooped the letters and did all of our Christmas shopping herself that year, not relying on Santa Claus. I was probably more upset that Santa didn’t write back than I was happy about getting a much more accurate selection of toys under my tree, but then I was a ’sensitive’ kid.

After that year I realized it was perhaps more effective and less heartbreaking for my brother and I to simply tack our lists to the kitchen fridge. Frustratingly for my parents, our belief in Santa and accompanying Christmas spirit did not abate as our lists got longer and more complex… and expensive.

I always made sure to ask for world peace as well, and still do to this day. One year it was the only thing on my list. I figure if there’s one thing Santa could actually help out with, that’d be it.

- Chris