Postal Service ends Santa replies
By The Associated Press
This article was published November 19, 2009 at 11:11 a.m.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Starry-eyed children writing letters to the jolly man at the North Pole this Christmas season likely won’t get a response from Santa Claus or his helpers.
The U.S. Postal Service is dropping a popular national program begun in 1954 in the small Alaska town of North Pole, where volunteers open and respond to thousands of letters addressed to Santa each year. Replies come with North Pole postmarks.
Last year, a postal worker in Maryland recognized an Operation Santa volunteer there as a registered sex offender. The postal worker interceded before the individual could answer a child’s letter, but the Postal Service viewed the episode as a big enough scare to tighten rules in such programs nationwide.
People in North Pole are incensed by the change, likening the Postal Service to the Grinch trying to steal Christmas.
North Pole Mayor Doug Isaacson agreed caution is necessary to protect children. But he’s angered that the North Pole’s program should be affected by a sex offender’s actions on the East Coast — and he thinks it’s wrong that locals just learned of the change.
Read tomorrow's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.
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