If you’re not a resident of one of those seven cities, there’s the Greetings from the North Pole Post Office program, also sponsored by the USPS. Parents can include a reply letter to their child’s wishlist, written “by Santa,” and include it when they send off their kid’s letter, keeping them in separate envelopes. By addressing both letters to an address in Anchorage, Alaska, it’ll get to the appropriate “Santa’s helpers,” and the kiddos can receive a North Pole-postmarked reply.
Letters to Santa started in earnest after cartoonist Thomas Nast’s now-famous illustration of Santa Claus became commonplace, since part of it depicted Santa sorting through his mail.