What about those letters to Santa?

Writing a letter to Santa Claus is a tradition in the United States because, at least, one can send a letter, and it may have been a long time ago.

Before the United States Postal Service was founded in 1775, children in the United States would burn their letters to Santa Claus, believing that the ashes would rise and be delivered to him, Smithsonian's National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. Even as more modern communication methods like email and text messaging have emerged, hundreds of thousands of children from around the world are still sending old-fashioned snail mail to Santa Claus, said Nancy Pope, curator of postal history at the Museum. Send a Christmas wish list. Incredibly, many of these letters were answered.

In response to annual flooding, the United States Postal Service (USPS) - Santa's primary ghostwriter (besides parents) - created Operation Santa in the early 20th century, allowing The postman replies to the letter. This year, the USPS is getting into the 21st century, making it possible for kids to email Santa, at least in New York City.

New York is where Operation Santa Claus began in 1907, but it was not fully launched until 1913. The next year, the postmaster in Santa Claus, Indiana, also began answering letters from children, said Emily Thompson, director of the town's nonprofit Santa Claus Museum and Village. Museum director Emily Thompson said the museum responds to letters sent to the town, as well as those from Santa Claus or the North Pole.

"Our number of letters increases year by year.". (Courtesy Santa Claus Museum and Village)

Surprisingly, the Internet age has had no impact on the first-class mail the museum receives. "Our letters are increasing year by year," Thompson said.

Santa Claus first appeared in print in the United States in 1810, in a letter from the New York Historical Society. Alexis, author of "Santa Claus," Kes Palmer writes. In the early 19th century, he said, Santa Claus lived more in the lexicon of moralists who dispensed gifts than of capitalists who gave gifts. In 1871, the image of Santa Claus, whose desk was filled with letters from mischievous and kindly parents, went viral when Harper's cartoonist Thomas Nast created the iconic image of Santa Claus children. Nast also popularized the concept that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, Palmer said. In 1879, Nast drew an illustration of children sending letters to Santa Claus. Harper's Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast created the iconic image of Santa Claus and drew an illustration of children sending letters to Santa in 1879 (color detail). (Alami)

's Nast cartoons captured the nation's imagination, and the postal service soon became the vehicle for children's most fervent Christmas wishes. The Postal Service isn't entirely up to the job, Pope said. Initially, letters addressed to "Santa Claus" or "The North Pole" were mostly sent to the Dead Letter Office (DLO) because "they were addressed to 'spoiler alert' people who didn't exist," Pope said.

< p> is the concept of a dead letter office, used to handle letters and packages with illegible or non-existent addresses. Pope said that since at least the first postmaster general, Benjamin Franklin, there have been no return addresses and no unanswered addresses. Appropriate postage. A few such offices were established in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with the main DLO in Washington, DC. At the turn of the 20th century, Pope said, clerks who were almost entirely women would sort dead letters and burn those that could not be returned.

Packages are harder to burn, especially since they are often filled with interesting items such as skulls, reptiles, or even a large box of brass knuckles. The DLO in Washington started displaying these strange things in glass cases. Eventually, the U.S. Patent Office transferred these treasures to the Smithsonian Institution, which added them to its collection. One of them, now

Though mail volume has increased over the past few years, the tradition of writing letters may be disappearing, Thompson said.

In a sign of the times, in 2016, the museum began instructing volunteers to use only block letters when writing because most children can no longer read cursive, she said.

Letters give them a chance to tell a story, she noted. Many children will take time to write about their days or their siblings or parents. Handwritten responses are also valued by children, she said, noting that kids today don't receive a ton of mail.

Some commercial websites promise emails from the North Pole or video calls with Santa, perhaps hastening the demise of the old-fashioned paper reply. Handwritten letters from Santa Claus or others "may be an increasingly important and rare thing," Thompson said. Pope agreed, noting that letters were written in the 1970s. and declined in the 1980s, and then postal cards fell out of popularity. "Our generation now finds email huge," Pope said, although she notes that millennial women aren't interested in "the romantic rebirth of writing letters."

Even so, Pop wondered, "What next?"? Is it entirely emotional? ""