Dear Santa letter program helps holiday wishes come true

LOS ANGELES — Through the power of the mail, the U.S. Postal Service has connected families, friends, and loved ones during the holiday season for generations. But the Postal Service does more during the holidays than just deliver greeting cards and gift packages.

Every year thousands of postal employees, charitable organizations, corporations and individuals participate in making children’s holiday wishes come true by answering the letters to Santa that the Postal Service receives and makes available to the public.

This year the Postal Service expects to receive over one million letters addressed to Santa Claus — more than 30,000 of them right here in the greater Los Angeles Basin area. To find out how you can participate, contact one of these U.S. Postal Service Consumer Affairs offices:

ZIP Codes 900-904
Phone: 323-586-4380
Los Angeles District
7001 S. Central Avenue
Los Angeles CA 90052

ZIP Codes 905-908, 917-918, 926-928
Phone: 714-662-6215
Santa Ana District
3101 W. Sunflower Avenue
Santa Ana CA 92799

ZIP Codes 910-916, 930-935
Phone: 661-775-6681
Sierra Coastal District
28201 Franklin Parkway
Santa Clarita CA 91383

It all started back in 1912 when Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock authorized local postmasters to allow individuals and institutions to use letters addressed to Santa Claus for philanthropic purposes.

The Postal Service is proud of the role we play in making these letters to Santa available and facilitating their distribution to the public to answer. And whether it means helping a struggling single-parent household during the holidays or just encouraging a child to keep up the good work in school, answering these letters to Santa is what this time of year is all about.

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Please Note: For broadcast quality video and audio, photo stills and other media resources, visit the USPS Newsroom at www.usps.com/news.

An independent federal agency, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that visits every address in the nation, 146 million homes and businesses, six days a week. It has 37,000 retail locations and relies on the sale of postage, products, and services to pay for operating expenses, not tax dollars. The Postal Service has annual revenues of $75 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail.