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Santa Claus House in North Pole, Alaska

The U.S. Postal Service has gone Scrooge this year by shutting down a program in North Pole, Alaska where volunteers responded to letters sent to Santa Claus. The program answered thousands upon thousands of letters every year.

The program will go on elsewhere in the U.S., but privacy concerns have led to more restrictions, and those tighter restrictions just aren't possible in Alaska.

Why all the fuss? In 2008, a post office employee in Maryland noticed that one Operation Santa volunteer was registered as a sex offender. Fortunately, the employee intervened before the volunteer could answer a child's letter, but the Post Office decided it was time to tighten things up.

The most visible effect of the Alaska shutdown will be that generically addressed to "Santa Claus, North Pole" won't be sent to the little Alaska town of 2,100, and therefore kids won't get a response back with a "North Pole" postmark.

North Pole Mayor Doug Isaacson isn't happy about the change. He agrees that change is necessary but he's upset that North Pole's program has been affected by a sex offender on the East Coast. He also thinks it's unfair that residents just found out about the change.

Isaacson says:

"It's Grinchlike that the Postal Service never informed all the little elves
before the fact. They've been working on this for how long?"

The three words that best describe this change are as follows, and I quote, "Stink, Stank, Stunk."

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Technorati Tags: Alaska, Doug Isaacson, National Sex Offender Registry, North Pole, Santa Claus, United States Postal Service

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