14 Weeks Until Christmas

There are just 14 weeks to go until Christmas, friends. And it is time to talk about Santa’s mail.

Now, I work in the office of Mrs. Claus. And she gets a lot of mail. So I know a little about this.

But today I visited the office of Santa Claus – and his mail is completely different.

I went over there because Mrs. Claus is trying to set her schedule. Last week she visited North Pole Flight Command. She knows that Santa will have other assignments for her, especially come November when he goes out on the road again, so she wants to find out what he wants her to do.

Well, I didn’t learn that. Elf Joel, who handles Santa’s calendar, told me that Santa hasn’t told him yet about what Mrs. Claus will be doing.

But while I was there trying to track things down I got a good look at how they handle Santa’s mail.

First of all, with all the letters and wish lists that Santa receives you’d expect to see pile of letters and boxes of mail sitting around.

I didn’t see any of that.

What I saw were computers – and lots of elves working on them.

You see, when your letter arrives at the North Pole Post Office, whether it is written on a card or on paper or in an email or whatever – it gets sorted. If it’s on paper of any kind, it gets scanned.

Then it all gets sent electronically over to Santa’s office where those elves on all the computers sort it all again. That’s all they do. All day long. They sort Santa’s mail.

They basically arrange Santa’s mail in such a way that he can read it quickly. Santa will come in to his office once or twice a day, where he sits at his big desk, which has a very big computer screen. Off to his left is a row of small desks, with computers stationed there with elves at the ready. As Santa reads his mail he assigns it to one of the elves. Sometimes he pounds on his keyboard to answer the mail but most of the time he just reads it and then assigns it to someone. He’s very fast at it and he needs to be.

Now here’s the incredible thing. When Santa is not in his office he still find time to work on his mail.

He has a number of clerks, just like Elf Joel. A good many of them are mail clerks – their only job is to help Santa deal with the mail.

They not only work in Santa’s office but they travel with Santa wherever he goes. Even around the North Pole there are always a dozen elves with Santa. They carry laptops and tablets and they work on Santa’s mail even as he walks and talks with other people.

Whenever Santa has a spare moment – like sitting in a sleigh being taken to another appointment somewhere – he works a little on his mail.

You’ll be glad to know that as of today he is only 24 days behind on his mail. That’s pretty good for September because we’re quickly reaching the time of year when the mail comes in faster than Santa can keep up with. Right now, there are about 16 elves helping Santa with his mail. He adds from about this point forward another 10 elves a week, just to keep up with what comes in.

While it is true there is no way Santa can ANSWER all his mail that comes in he does see it all, thanks to all those many elves who sort and organize how it all comes in.

How do they sort it? It seems like they do it in a million different ways. They sort it by name, by age, by gender, by location, by sector – you name it and these elves put a tag on each people of mail that helps Santa identify it later on. That’s right – Santa saves his mail. Not only can Santa see mail you just sent him but he can see mail you have EVER sent him, just by looking it up in his database (actually his elves do that for him).

This is really important, because Santa wants to remember your whole history and he wants to make sure he knows all you have ever said to him.

Seeing how Santa’s mail works makes me glad that I work for Mrs. Claus. I got some good ideas from the elves in Santa’s office that will make Mrs. Claus’ mail work better. But there’s no way I want to work with as much mail as those guys in Santa’s office.

My advice to you, if you’re going to send Santa something, is to do it as early as possible. Santa reads his mail even when he is on the sleigh. It’s his constant companion because you are important to him. But to make things easier on him – and on his elves – couldn’t you send your letters and wish lists in a little earlier this year?

Think about it!

Talk to you next week.