The USPS Greetings from the North Pole Program

Have your letter from Santa post marked by the the North Pole! And its FREE!

What is the Greetings from the North Pole Program?

According to the United States Postal Service’s website: “…the Postal Service^TM can help you prove it when Santa replies to your child’s letter — complete with the North Pole Postmark! Create the excitement of Christmas, letter writing, stamps and penmanship.”

How do I get a letter stamped from the North Pole?

According to the United States Postal Service’s website: “Customers can obtain the North Pole postmark on a letter from Santa or on holiday greeting cards. Write a letter to your child and sign it from Santa. Place this letter into an envelope addressed to your child with the return address from SANTA, NORTH POLE.”

What Supplies do I Need?

1. Your child’s letter to Santa, and Your reply letter (from Santa)
2. Two different writing utensils
3. One standard envelope, self addressed, and with postage
4. One larger envelope with postage

Step 1: Have your child write a letter to Santa

This can be either handwritten on a blank piece of paper by your child, or there are tons of various templates out there on Pinterest, Etsy, and Canva. I personally went to Canva and searched for “letter to santa” and there were a lot of results. The template I chose was a basic fill in the blank style, as my two children are 3 1/2 years old and 21 months.

Step 2: Write a personalized response to your child’s letter and sign in “from Santa”

So, No the United States Postal Service is not going to respond to your child’s letter to Santa personally. The response letter from Santa is coming from YOU, and will need to be included in your submission to the Alaska Postmaster, see the following steps.

If I am being completely honest I do not care for my handwriting so I opted for an electronic response from Santa. Again, there are tons of Letters from Santa on Pinterest, Etsy, and Canva to choose from, both free and customizable letters you can purchase. I have a Canva account so that is where I found a Letter from Santa template, and then reworded the letter to cater to my family.

To make the letter from Santa more “authentic”, and fun, I purchased this self-inking rubber stamp on amazon for Santa to stamp his signature at the end of his letter.

I also decided to go extra and include these adorable ‘Official Elf Report’ cards for each of my kids. I also found these on amazon. These are not required by the USPS program at all, I just thought they would be that much more festive!

Step 3: Insert both letters into an envelope, and address it to the child.

To break this down, you are going to place the letter your child wrote to Santa AND the response letter you created from Santa in the SAME envelope. That envelope will be addressed to the child’s name and home address.

So what the United States Postal Service is doing is merely post marking your pre-addressed, pre-postaged envelope with a North Pole stamp and mailing it back to you. They are not responding as Santa. The leg work of this program is on the parent.

I found these adorable envelopes on amazon with a red ribbon and bow detail, to which I inserted both letters from my children to Santa, my response letter from Santa, and my two Elf report cards. Because I had more bulk than the average person my letter required two postage stamps as it was over 1 oz, however your letter may be fine with one postage stamp.

Step4: Add the return address to the envelope

The United States Postal Service website has a requirement that the envelope’s return address read as follows: SANTA, NORTH POLE. However, I found this cute return address self inking rubber stamp on amazon and risked using it on our letter from Santa. The United States Postal Service did accept our letter with the return stamp, and my kids received the letter back with no issue.

Step 5: Ensure a First-Class Mail stamp is affixed to the envelope.

I would recommend weighing your letter just to be safe. I included extras, like the Elf Report Cards, so my envelope ended up going over the First-Class weight limit for the Forever Stamp. I just included two stamps on my envelope and all was well.

Step 6: Place the complete envelope into a larger envelope, both with appropriate postage, and address the larger envelope to:

NORTH POLE POSTMARK
POSTMASTER
4141 POSTMARK DR
ANCHORAGE AK 99530-9998

As with the larger envelope, I went over in weight for one First-Class stamp so I needed to include extra postage. I just used a simple kitchen scale and one United States Postal Service First-Class stamp is good for 1.0 ounce of weight.

I also made sure to include my actual return address on the larger envelope just incase something were to happen to this letter while in the mail, it would be returned to me.

Timing and How Long Did this Take?

The United States Postal Service recommends sending your letters between November 23 and December 1.

We had our letter in the mail on Saturday December 2, 2023, and our letter from Santa was in our mailbox Monday December 11, 2023. So that was approximately 10 days, or 5 business days from Virginia to Alaska, and back. Pretty great service if you ask me!

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Resources

United States Post Office, “Greetings from the North Pole Post Office”, accessed December 12, 2023. https://about.usps.com/holidaynews/letters-from-santa.htm