ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A group of volunteer Santa Claus “elves” in Alaska’s frigid interior is determined to save a popular holiday letter service featuring the North Pole’s most beloved icon.
The group is looking to counter a decision by the Postal Service to discontinue a program begun in 1954 in the small town of North Pole, where volunteers open and respond to thousands of letters addressed to “Santa Claus, North Pole” each year.
Gabby Gaborik, chief elf among several dozen volunteers, said he met with postal officials this week to come up with an alternative.
He’s now working with local government officials to get “101 Santa Claus Lane” as an address for his group, Santa’s Mailbag. That way children will have a specific destination for their letters, allowing volunteers to run their own program and bypass stringent new rules implemented by the Postal Service after security issues arose in a similar program in Maryland last year.
Gaborik believes his town’s name gives the local effort more cachet than other destinations.
“The city was founded on the Christmas theme,” he said Thursday. “This is our identity. This is North Pole, Alaska.”
The North Pole program was stymied by a tighter process put in place nationwide by the Postal Service after a postal worker in Maryland recognized a volunteer with the agency’s Operation Santa program as a registered sex offender. The worker intervened before the individual could answer a child’s letter, but the agency viewed the scare as a reason to tighten security.
The Postal Service had already restricted its policies but the Maryland episode prompted more changes, such as barring volunteers from having access to last names and addresses. The Postal Service instead redacts that information and replaces the addresses with codes that match computerized addresses known only to the post office.
It’s up to local managers to determine whether to go through the time- consuming effort. The restrictions don’t affect privately run letter efforts.
The Postal Service decided this month to end the North Pole letter program, saying dealing with the tighter restrictions isn’t feasible in Alaska.
People in North Pole are incensed by the changes, likening the Postal Service to the Grinch trying to steal Christmas.
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