Community groups helping Santa respond to letters
FAIRBANKS - Community groups again this year are helping Santa respond to all those letters and cards from children.
Just how to respond sometimes is a challenge. For instance, there was the letter from the little girl sent to Santa in Fairbanks that said, "Dear Santa: Please don't bring my sister a thing. She has been terrible all year."
More post offices around the country have stepped in to intercept letters addressed to "Santa, North Pole" and found volunteers to answer them, but a large number still make it to Fairbanks. More than 28,000 letters have been received.
Community groups also are contributing stationery, stamps, envelopes and form letters.
From all over the country people also mail their cards to Fairbanks in large envelopes so the individual letters can pick up a North Pole postmark before the cards are dispatched hither and yon.
More than 44,000 North Pole cancellations have been issued so far, most of them for Christmas cards.
After they are stamped with the North Pole postmark, the letters are mailed from Fairbanks.