Now that Christmas is over, Swedish postal workers can take a break from their role as Santa’s helpers, answering thousands of letters sent to St Nick from all over the world with addresses such as “Lapland,” “Reindeer Land” or “Santa’s Igloo”
The postal service PostNord last year alone received around 16,000 letters intended for Father Christmas. Each receives a reply.
Typically, the reply “says ‘Hi from Santa’, with thanks for the letter. And he says that he has got a lot of work to do up until Christmas and that he really appreciates the letter,” according to the postal official in charge. The letters end with a line that encourages kids to brighten somebody’s day by writing them a letter, and “to not forget that all your dreams can come true.”
Besides sending out replies, Postnord also selects a number of letters each year to add to its museum, which now holds about 10,000 Santa letters from around the world, the oldest dating back to the 1890s.
