Marquette’s U.S. Post Office is participating in its annual letters to Santa program, collecting epistolary wishes from kids around the area during the weeks leading up to Christmas and ensuring that they receive responses. 

To participate, kids need only give their letter addressed to
Santa at the North Pole to a mail carrier or slip it into one of the post office’s blue boxes so that they can be brought back to the station, city carrier for the Marquette Post office Angie LeDuc said.

The Marquette Post Office uses the work of about five to 10 volunteers each year to ensure that each letter with a return address gets a response back so that children can feel the joy of having a letter back from Santa Claus and his elves.

“Make sure to write the return address on them,” DeLuc said.

Although she is sometimes able to write the return address when she picks letters up from a house, letters can’t be returned to the child’s home if the post office has no idea where they live.

Kids don’t need to put postage stamps on the letters, but can if they want to.

Depending on how many letters are collected each year, the post office needs volunteers to help make the Christmas miracle happen. NMU students are welcome to approach the post office to volunteer if they are interested.

During the ninth annual Winter Snow Fun Holiday Parade on Friday, Dec. 6 from 9 a.m to 9 p.m., the Post Office will have a lighted vehicle in the parade with the other decorated floats. The parade will begin by NMU and it will go down Third Street, DeLuc said. Santa will attend, and post office volunteers will help his elves with letter collection.

Last year, they collected over 300 letters at the parade, DeLuc said. On other days leading up to the holiday, the post office generally collects about one per day.