You can ‘adopt’ a child’s letter to Santa through a USPS program

The holiday season is upon us, and that means many children are making their Christmas wish lists for Santa Claus and mailing them to the North Pole. 

A viral Facebook post with more than 60,000 shares claims that anyone can help Santa with his Christmas deliveries through a United States Postal Service program. 

“To any parent struggling to afford Christmas this year, all you have to do is write a letter!” the post says. “If your child writes a letter to Santa and mails it to the address below, USPS will post it to the Operation Santa website. Someone will then anonymously adopt your letter and buy the gift(s) requested…then it will be shipped to your house from ‘Santa.’”

Gail asked VERIFY via Facebook if the USPS Operation Santa program is legitimate because they would “love to adopt a kid at Christmas.”

THE QUESTION

Does a USPS program allow you to “adopt” children’s letters to Santa?

THE SOURCES

• The United States Postal Service (USPS)
• Be An Elf, a nonprofit that supports USPS Operation Santa

THE ANSWER

Yes, a USPS program allows you to adopt a child’s letter to Santa and send them gifts. 

WHAT WE FOUND

The USPS Operation Santa program turns 111 years old in 2023. People can read children’s letters to Santa online, “adopt” one or more of them, and later mail their gifts directly to the child or family, the nonprofit Be an Elf, which supports the program, says. 

Operation Santa “relies solely on random acts of kindness and the generosity of strangers,” USPS wrote in a press release on Nov. 20.

“It allows people to help children and families have a magical holiday when they otherwise might not – safely and securely,” the USPS said. 

Children can send letters to Santa through Dec. 11, 2023. People have until Dec. 18 to “adopt” letters and the USPS recommends shipping gifts by this date, too, so they arrive before Christmas. 

Here’s everything you need to know about how the program works for both kids and volunteers.

How to ‘adopt’ a child’s Santa letter

People who want to adopt a letter should visit the USPS Operation Santa website to register and have their identity verified. 

If volunteers can’t complete their ID verification online, they will receive a code and instructions on how to do so in-person at a local post office, USPS says. 

Once they are verified, the volunteer will receive an email with information on how to participate in the program. Then, they can read the letters online and choose one or more to “adopt.”

Each person who registers can adopt up to 15 letters, according to an Operation Santa FAQs page. 

People can respond to the child’s letter however they want to, granting some or all of their wishes to Santa. However, the items must be new and not gently used for health and safety reasons. 

The USPS urges people to only adopt letters they can fulfill, since each adopted letter is removed from the Operation Santa website. 

If someone is unable to fulfill the letter’s request, they should cancel the adoption in the “Your Letters” section of their USPS Operation Santa account. 

How to ship gifts to letter writers

There are more than 19,000 Post Office locations throughout the country that accept Operation Santa packages. People can find a participating location online. 

The USPS does not share the addresses of the letter writers with the volunteers. Instead, volunteers receive a QR code that post office workers can scan. The volunteers can also print the QR code and put it on their packages. 

Anyone who adopts a letter is responsible for postage fees to ship the gifts. 

For more information on packing and shipping gifts, check out this FAQs page. 

How children can send a letter to Santa

Children who send letters to Santa should include their full name and return address in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope, and make sure to attach a First-Class stamp in the upper right corner. They should also include their return address in the letter itself.

The envelope should be addressed to Santa like this:

Santa

123 Elf Road

North Pole, 88888

For privacy reasons, senders’ personally identifiable information, such as addresses, is redacted from letters before they are posted online and adopters never see an address when they send a gift, according to the USPS.

The USPS recommends that children list the gifts they want in order of preference, be specific about what they are asking for and avoid asking for gifts that may be too expensive. 

Letters “are not evaluated based on needs or if they’re fit to be fulfilled,” the USPS says. They are posted online for people to decide which one they want to adopt. 

More information about letter writing is available on the USPS FAQs page.