“Unveiling the Secret: The Surprising Destination of Santa’s Letters Revealed!”
From there, these letters are processed via scanning and redacting any and all identifying information. They are then placed in a database accessible online, where Santa’s helpers can go to access them and see if there are any letters they might like to volunteer to take care of on some level, with each helper able to take up to 15 such letters if they so choose. The helpers are also free to fulfill the requests in whatever way they please. On that note, once the helper opts into accepting handling of the letter, they then can purchase and mail up to six packages to the child’s home via U.S. Priority Mail.
You might at this point wonder how Santa’s helpers can mail to some anonymous family out there? Well, once you accept a letter to Santa, you are sent a QR code which the USPS’s system uses to know what address to ultimately deliver the packages to without anyone but the postal service knowing where it’s going. Noteworthy here, it is also completely anonymous on the sender’s side as well. You are, after all, Santa’s helper, so the gift ultimately came from Santa in the system.
In this way, tens of thousands of children each year in the U.S. who write to Santa directly receive their gifts from Santa via USPS and Santa’s helpers.
As for what happens to the letters after all this processing, they are simply destroyed the same as any other letters where the recipient is outside of the coverage area of any world postal system.
Bonus Fact:
Arguably one of the most famous editorials ever written (still the record holder for the most reprinted English newspaper editorial of all time) was published on September 21, 1897 in the New York Sun. It didn’t address matters of importance in the city, in the country, or even in the world at large. So what was it about? In September of 1897, a little girl named Virginia O’Hanlon was deeply troubled. Some of her school friends insisted that Santa Claus didn’t exist. When she went to her father, Dr. Philip F. O’Hanlon, with her concerns he suggested she write to the Sun, as the family often did.
