Starry-eyed children writing letters to the jolly man at the North Pole this holiday 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 person 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. The letter program is a revered holiday tradition in North Pole, where light posts are curved and striped like candy canes and streets have names such as Kris Kringle Drive and Santa Claus Lane. Volunteers in the letter program even sign the response letters as Santa’s elves and helpers.
North Pole Mayor Doug Isaacson agreed caution is necessary to protect children. But he’s outraged 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.
“It’s Grinch-like that the Postal Service never informed all the little elves before the fact,” he said. “They’ve been working on this for how long?” The agency now prohibits volunteers from having access to children’s family names and addresses, said spokeswoman Sue Brennan.
Seriously?
The article doesn’t even explain what the sex offender was doing.. Was he/she writing a long pervy letter to some poor kid or is he/she just one of those people on the sex offender list for peeing in a public place? Good journalism there “Rachel D’oro ASSOCIATED PRESS”, I hope you didn’t pay too much for those journalism classes.
Why don’t background checks work? How did the sex offender get the volunteer job in the first place? How did the other postal worker “recognize” the person was a sex offender (face stamp?!)?
Hint, these are missing key facts.
Are we really that surprised? How often have we heard of one knucklehead (or a small group of them) screwing the rest of us because of an overreaction by authority? The shoe bomber comes to mind.
Actually the program is back. Send letters to Santa with the help of an adult to.
NORTH POLE HOLIDAY POSTMARK
POSTMASTER
4141 POSTMARK DR
ANCHORAGE AK 99530-9998
The letters from Santa need to be received in Anchorage before December 15, 2009.
Three year olds who scrawl, To SAnTA on a beef jerky filled brown envelope with a wax crayon, had it coming.
We can’t afford the Santa’s Helpers program anyway. We’re broke. Thanks to Cheney’s bonehead war.
The entire federal government should be shrinking down as the recession dictates. Don’t see that happening though. We’ll just print up more o’ them greenbacks & keep the charade chugging along.
Guess I know who gets coal in their stockings this year.
It would probably be best that programs that encourage children to believe in imaginary things go away..
This is the state of America. Santa Claus letters viewed as a threat to children because some child molestor MIGHT get a child’s address. Gee. Like it’s so fucking tough for find out where some kids live. What is WRONG with people?
Try taking a picture of a kid in public nowadays. Good luck.
Thanks, Oprah Winfrey and all of her bonehead fans.
This news is so old already. That program was revived. Once again FOX NEWS broke the story before anyone. Why are you putting up such old worn out stuff? I am guessing that those who dropped it realized that if they were going to do so for “safety” reasons they would also have to drop ALL CORRESPONDENCE.
Here’s the full text of a brief news story in my local Saturday newspaper:
[From Wire Dispatches]
Anchorage, Alaska
Senator says Postal Service to resume Santa letters
An Alaska senator says the U.S. Postal Service is resuming a program allowing volunteers to respond to letters sent to Santa Claus in care of the North Pole, Alaska, post office.
Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Friday that Deputy Postmaster General Pat Donahoe told her in a phone call the agency has reconsidered its decision to not allow volunteers to answer the letters.
The program was suspended over privacy concerns.
Murkowski said Donahoe told her the program would resume in North Pole, but with some new security measures in place to protect the identities of children.
= = = = =
# 6 clancys_daddy:
“Guess I know who gets coal in their stockings this year.”
Tiny Tim probably would have LOVED getting a big lump of coal for Christmas! Heck, if the warming deniers are right and we’re headed for another ice age, we _all_ might!
#7 Noting wrong with kids believing in imaginary things when they are young. It’s the one who still believe in them when they are old enough to know better that scare me.
#10 True but that’s another debate.