Time to write Santa, the post office says

Your little angels are restless and you want rest.

Seems like the perfect time to get the kids to write their letters to Santa and get them off in the mail.

The U.S. Post Office wants to remind you of a program where Santa writes back with a North Pole address, and you have until Dec. 15 to get your children's letters to him.

Sit down with your kids and help them write their completely honest letters to Santa about how good they’ve been this past year. Put each letter in an envelope addressed to Santa Claus, North Pole — but don’t seal the envelope.

Later on when the kids are not around, open the envelope and write a response from Santa on the back of the letter, or do so on a separate piece of paper. Put the response letter, along with your child’s letter, in an envelope and add this return address: Santa, North Pole. Put a first-class stamp on the envelope.

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Place the envelope in larger envelope — a priority mail flat rate envelope will work — with the appropriate postage and address it to “North Pole Postmark,” Postmaster, 4141 Postmark Drive, Anchorage, AK 99530-9998.

Letters to Santa must be received by the Anchorage postmaster no later than Dec. 15. Santa’s helpers will remove the outer envelope and run the Santa response envelope through the postmark machine so it looks like it really came from the North Pole.

The letter-writing adds excitement to the Christmas season and can help with your children’s penmanship, postal officials say.

The Santa response tradition with Anchorage has been going on for decades, said Ernie Swanson, a spokesman for the post office for the Anchorage region. It’s pretty popular, but not a huge number of letters are sent, he said

“Last year it was 160,000 letters,” Swanson said. “It has been going down. I just don’t know why.”

It may be that sending letters to Santa via a smartphone or a computer program has taken over.

In addition, anybody who wants to send Christmas cards to friends or family can do the same thing to get the North Pole postal mark.

Although there is some work involved for the Anchorage postal employees to open each outer envelope addressed to the North Pole, the post office doesn’t need to add extra staff. Running the return envelopes though the postmark machine takes no time, Swanson said.

“Letters are coming in already, and right after Thanksgiving it peaks,” he said.