santasuit2The snow is flying already up here at the North Pole. It is not even Halloween but with just two months now to go until Christmas it is certainly starting to feel merry here.

Elf Hugo and his team expanded the North Pole Post Office this week. They wanted to get this project done before November 1st and they made their deadline. They have been working on this since last May. They knocked out the north wall of the building and added several new rooms that will help them be more efficient. While there isn’t room for more mailbags there are several new offices with many computers that have been added. Santa gets more and more mail by way of computer these days.

“Here is how it works,” Elf Hugo said. “When we receive a letter for Santa we immediately make a record of it — who it came from and when it was received. Then we print the letter and put it into a special folder that is filed according to when it comes in. For example, if a letter or an email comes in at 8:00 am in the morning it goes into the morning folder. The letters that come in in the afternoon go into a different folder. Santa usually reads his morning mail as he sits down for lunch. His afternoon mail he gets to before he heads home for the day. And his evening folder he reads just before he goes to bed.”

After Santa reads the mail a clerk from Hugo’s department takes the folder back to the North Pole Post Office. It is logged as read by Santa and then it goes to the archives, where it is filed by the name of each person who sends it in. It is a very complicated process that takes a lot of organization.

“There is a lot more that goes on with this,” Elf Hugo said. “Santa has several assistants with him all the time and as he reads his mail he will ask one of his assistants to do something — ‘Elf Gerty, he will say, let’s send a letter in reply to this” — and then Santa dictates a letter to her. Or he will tell Elf Homer to add something to a list he keeps of all kids, or he will have Elf Chandler run to the workshop to tell them something. It all depends on what is on Santa’s mind as he reads the mail.”

With just two months to go Elf Hugo knows the mail is going to be pouring in to the North Pole faster than ever. “We don’t think we will ever get to the point where Santa gets all his mail faster than he has in the past. We want to just handle more of it better than we have before.” Elf Hugo explained. “We will reach a point where we will have more mail in December than he has time to read. That doesn’t mean Santa doesn’t see it. It just means it takes him more time to get through it all. We work to make it easier for him to do that.”

There is a great deal going on already here at the North Pole. We will do our best to keep you informed of the news as it becomes available.

Elf Ernest

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