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North Pole Alaska: Santa Shuts Down His Mailbox, Stays On Twitter

by Yuliya Talmazan | November 19, 2009 at 01:11 pm

466 views | 13 Recommendations | 3 comments

Many Christmas wishes are bound to never happen this year as destination North Pole, Alaska, is not going to be served by U.S. Postal Service anymore. That means that Santa Claus just will not attend to his mailbox this Holiday Season. A volunteer program started in 1954 had volunteers responding to letters from thousands of American children sent to the North Pole residence of Santa Claus. But now, the North Pole postage will become a thing of the past.

It is alleged the program is being terminated over the fears that there might be sex offenders and pedophiles among volunteers answering the letters. There was an unpleasant incident last year, when one of the program volunteers turned out to be a sex offender. The incident restricted volunteers' access to children's last names and addresses.

The Postal Service began restricting its policies in such programs in 2006, including requiring volunteers to show identification.

The agency now prohibits volunteers from having access to children's family names and addresses, said spokeswoman Sue Brennan. The Postal Service instead redacts the last name and addresses on each letter and replaces the addresses with codes that match computerized addresses known only to the post office — and leaves it up to individual post offices if they want to go through the time-consuming effort to shield the information.

But, in the age of social networks, kids need not despair. Santa is also gaining Internet savvy and is now on Twitter @SantaClaus. All wishes can be Tweeted out or directly messaged to Santa instantaneously, provided the wish fits into 140 characters of course!

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stejeb

at 13:28 on November 19th, 2009

Very seasonal...thank heavens for the world wide web!

Barbara McPherson

at 10:21 on November 23rd, 2009

End of an era. It's a shame that the criminals and weirdos of the world spoil so much of the good things. I wonder what little bird in the North will tweet into Santa's ear.