Another Christmas ruined by a sex offender

Source

Originally Posted by Washington Post, excerpts

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Starry-eyed children writing letters to the jolly man at the North Pole this holiday season likely won't get a response from Santa Claus or his helpers.

The U.S. Postal Service is dropping a popular national program begun in 1954 in the small Alaska town of North Pole, where volunteers open and respond to thousands of letters addressed to Santa each year. Replies come with North Pole postmarks.

Last year, a postal worker in Maryland recognized an Operation Santa volunteer there as a registered sex offender. The postal worker interceded before the individual could answer a child's letter, but the Postal Service viewed the episode as a big enough scare to tighten rules in such programs nationwide.

People in North Pole are incensed by the change, likening the Postal Service to the Grinch trying to steal Christmas. The letter program is a revered holiday tradition in North Pole, where light posts are curved and striped like candy canes and streets have names such as Kris Kringle Drive and Santa Claus Lane. Volunteers in the letter program even sign the response letters as Santa's elves and helpers.

North Pole Mayor Doug Isaacson agreed caution is necessary to protect children. But he's outraged North Pole's program should be affected by a sex offender's actions on the East Coast - and he thinks it's wrong that locals just learned of the change.

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

The Postal Service began restricting its policies in such programs in 2006, including requiring volunteers to show identification.

But the Maryland incident involving the sex offender prompted more changes, even forcing the agency to briefly suspend the Operation Santa program last year in New York and Chicago.

The agency now prohibits volunteers from having access to children's family names and addresses, said spokeswoman Sue Brennan. The Postal Service instead redacts the last name and addresses on each letter and replaces the addresses with codes that match computerized addresses known only to the post office - and leaves it up to individual post offices if they want to go through the time-consuming effort to shield the information.

Anchorage-based agency spokeswoman Pamela Moody said dealing with the tighter restrictions is not feasible in Alaska.

"It's always been a good program, but we're in different times and concerned for the privacy of the information," she said.

Moody stressed that kids can still send letters to Santa Claus. The Postal Service still runs the giant Operation Santa Program in which children can have their letters to Santa answered, and the restrictions do not affect privately run letter efforts.

What will change are the generically addressed letters to "Santa Claus, North Pole" that for years have been forwarded to the Alaska town. That program will stop, unless changes are made before Christmas.

Losing the Santa-letter cache is a blow to the community of 2,100 people, who pride themselves on their Christmas ties. Huge tourist attractions here include an everything-Christmas store, Santa Claus House, and the post office, where visitors can get a hand-stamped postmark on their postcards and packages.

Operations manager Paul Brown believes his business will be affected under changes to the volunteer Santa letter program because tens of thousands of letters are addressed to Santa Claus House, North Pole, Alaska.

Those letters will still be forwarded to volunteers but it's unclear yet if anything will be done with them. Those intercepted by the postal service will probably eventually be shredded.

Long story short, if you mail a letter to "Santa Claus, North Pole", the postal service will shred your letter because they're afraid it could be answered by a child molester. Thanks Big Brother.

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Of course, it wouldn't be the US if they didn't blow something out of proportion and do something completely retarded.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Do other countries have similar programs? I wasn't sure if writing Santa was an American thing.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

The USPS should shred them anyway. Don't reinforce the lies people tell their kids.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

But, Jessica, there is a Santa Claus. =o

I was speaking idiomatically.

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How ya doing, buddy?

You know there's probably something very healthy about filling a child with a sense of wonder and magic about the world. We should wait until they hit puberty at least before we start discussing nihilism with them.

Honestly this whole "show kids the harsh reality" is a little bitter.

It's like people opposed to dogmatism attacking spirituality. Your target selection criteria is perhaps a little too broad.

FELIPE NO

Writing Santa is not a purely American thing. But writing letters that don't actually REACH Santa, because they're sent to North Pole instead, is.

Yeah, I think I wrote Santa myself too, when I was really young. I think I got an elliptical kiss-ass reply back.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I'm guessing his sex offence was urinating in public, like most sex offenders.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by RABicle

I'm guessing his sex offence was urinating in public, like most sex offenders.

It is kinda amusing how everyone always assumes that sex offender = child rapist.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I thought this story was about a Catholic priest. Go figure.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Well that's great, nothing encourages good will towards men than destroying little children's hopes when Santa doesn't respond to their letters.

How ya doing, buddy?

United States Poontang Service

Additional Spam:
Nobody wants to talk about the fact that Santa is a slaveholder? Typical Americans.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Quote:

You know there's probably something very healthy about filling a child with a sense of wonder and magic about the world.

You don't have to lie to them in order to do that.

Perhaps not "magical" but many aspect of reality is plenty wondrous.

Perhaps I am deprived in other ways, but growing up in an Asian country, I never consider not being told about Santa as a depravity of my spirit of wonder. I still wonder about the universe, and the vastness of it in which my mind can only beginning to grasp.

There is nothing wrong with comfortable and fun traditions, but to say in general that people deprived because they don't experience such tradition is like me saying Americans are deprived because they never properly experienced Chinese New Year and Mid Autumn festival.

How ya doing, buddy?

I wouldn't really say kids are deprived or anything if they hear about the true nature of santa, it's just a shame that it's being taken so seriously as to not allow kids to indulge in a little fun when they're younger.

FELIPE NO

If that's the only way that kids are allow to have a little fun then it sounds like a failure of imagination.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

The only problem with letting your kids believe in Santa is being able to let them figure out for themselves that Santa isn't real instead of being traumatized by that one know-it-all kid who thinks he's hot shit because he knows The Truth.

OTOH shattering childhood beliefs prepares them for the reality that people will tell you lies all the time, big ones.

It's also a good example of why there is no God.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Hey, don't be counting Santa out just yet. Santa Claus, IN will gladly take your letters.

But it'll only be a matter of time before the aftershock reaches this place.

There's nowhere I can't reach.