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ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A group of volunteer Santa Claus “elves” in Alaska’s frigid interior is determined to save a popular holiday letter service featuring the North Pole’s most beloved icon.
The group is looking to counter a decision by the U.S. Postal Service to discontinue a program begun in 1954 in the small town of North Pole, where volunteers open and respond to thousands of letters addressed to “Santa Claus, North Pole” each year.
Gabby Gaborik, chief elf among several dozen volunteers, said he met with Postal Service officials this week to come up with an alternative.
He’s working with local government officials to get “101 Santa Claus Lane” as an address for his group, Santa’s Mailbag. That way children will have a specific destination for their letters, allowing volunteers to run their own program and bypass stringent rules implemented by the Postal Service after security issues arose in a similar program in Maryland last year.
“The city was founded on the Christmas theme,” Gaborik said. “This is our identity. This is North Pole, Alaska.”
The North Pole program was stymied by a tighter process put in place nationwide by the Postal Service after a postal worker in Maryland recognized a volunteer with the agency’s Operation Santa program as a registered sex offender.
The Postal Service had already restricted its policies in such programs in 2006. But the Maryland episode prompted more changes, such as barring volunteers from having access to children’s last names and addresses. The Postal Service instead redacts that information from each letter and replaces the addresses with codes that match computerized addresses known only to the post office.
The Postal Service decided this month to end the North Pole letter program, saying dealing with the tighter restrictions isn’t feasible in Alaska. The agency considers the North Pole effort part of its giant Operation Santa program, although locals think of their program as unique.
Volunteers in the letter program sign the response letters as Santa’s elves and helpers.
