Posti, Finland’s postal service says…
Every year, millions of letters are sent to Santa at the North Pole, even though his official hometown is in the Arctic Circle in Finland in a city called Rovaniemi. This Christmas, Finland’s postal service is calling on the world to get his address right.
Many people associate Santa Claus with the North Pole. But when it comes to an official hometown, Rovaniemi is the only city to carry the title. Earlier this year, the European Union’s Intellectual Property Office also upheld the city’s registered trademark, “The Official Hometown of Santa Claus”.
Now, Finland’s postal service Posti is taking the correction one step further. Posti, which runs Santa Claus’ Main Post Office in the Arctic Circle, is launching a campaign to tackle what it calls “the world’s biggest address mix-up”: the millions of letters still sent to Santa at the North Pole.
As part of the initiative, special Santa mailboxes will appear in selected locations, giving people the chance to get their letters directly to the Arctic Circle.
The North Pole Redirect makes sure every letter is heard
Posti is particularly targeting countries where the North Pole is deeply established as Santa’s address, including the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. Throughout this holiday season, special Santa mailboxes will be introduced in London, New York and Toronto, and every letter collected from them will be delivered to Santa Claus’ Main Post Office before Christmas.
Posti is also inviting other postal services around the world to forward letters addressed to Santa at the North Pole to the Arctic Circle in Finland. In some countries, postal operators already go the extra mile. MaltaPost, for example, provides a special mailbox each Christmas and forwards thousands of letters to Finland every year.
For Posti, every letter to Santa represents something bigger than mail: a cherished tradition shared around the world.
“People write to Santa to be heard. Their hopes and wishes matter to us. By our estimate, millions of letters to Santa are misdirected every year, and we don’t want a single wish lost along the way. That’s why this Christmas we’re making it easier for more letters to reach Santa,” says Jenni Ihatsu, Vice President, Brand and Marketing at Posti, Finland’s Postal Service.
A global Christmas tradition
Santa Claus’ Main Post Office is not simply a Christmas attraction. It is an official branch of Finland’s postal service, operated by Posti throughout the year. Six postal elves work there year-round, with the team growing to around 20 during the peak Christmas period.
The post office receives approximately 500,000 letters every year. In the busiest weeks of the holiday season, as many as 30,000 letters arrive in a single day.
Letters to Santa are sent from nearly every corner of the globe, from Europe and Asia to North America and beyond. Over the years, Santa Claus’ Main Post Office has received more than 25 million letters from 200-plus countries.
“On any given day, we might be reading letters from Poland, Taiwan, Italy, Japan or Finland. Each one of them brings a small piece of the world to our door, in different languages, drawings and stories. My elf team and I never stop marveling at them, and we’re ready for more,” says Katja Tervonen, Chief Elf at Santa Claus’ Main Post Office.
How to participate
Find a special mailbox:
Official Santa mailboxes will be available at selected locations:
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Leicester Square, London, United Kingdom (4–8 November)
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Domino Park, New York, United States (18–22 November)
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Sankofa Square, Toronto, Canada (2–6 December)
Write to a country-specific campaign address:
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In the UK: North Pole Redirect P.O. Box 2662 275 New North Road London, N1 7AA
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In the US: North Pole Redirect P.O. Box 5044 697 Grand St Brooklyn, NY 11211
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In Canada: North Pole Redirect P.O. Box 427B 2967 Dundas St. W. Toronto, ON M6P 1Z2
Letters arriving by December 15th will be gathered and transported to Lapland, where they will be hand-delivered to Santa at Santa Claus’ Main Post Office.
As an added incentive, participants can also enter a social media challenge, with a winner receiving a trip to Rovaniemi and Santa Claus’ Main Post Office.
Santa Claus’ Official Address: Santa Claus’ Main Post Office Arctic Circle FINLAND
HOWEVER – WE AT PEN PREFER THE FOLLOWING:
Why Does Santa Claus Live in the North Pole?
If you love Christmas, you’re probably curious about where Santa Claus lives and what his toy workshop looks like. Santa Claus lives in the North Pole at the northernmost tip of the globe. He lives there with Mrs. Claus, the elves that help him in the workshop, and all the wonderful reindeer that guide his sleigh.
If you want to know his exact address, it’s 580 South Santa Claus Lane, North Pole, AK 99705. Unless you live in Alaska, going to the North Pole to visit Santa may be a little difficult, since it’s pretty far away from most places.
So why does Santa live all the way up in the North Pole? From a logistics standpoint, it would be better for him to live somewhere in Albania or Montenegro. These two countries have an average distance of 4,037 miles to all other countries in the world. If Santa Claus moved his base of operations to either of those countries, it would be easier to reach everyone on Christmas Eve as he delivers gifts.
However, Santa Clause chose his home very carefully. He lives in the North Pole because it’s what’s best for his workshop and his helpers.
Santa needs to stay in the North Pole because it’s one of the few places on earth that’s consistently cold. Santa has reindeer, which are animals that are native to the Arctic, sub-Arctic, and tundra regions of Northern Europe, Siberia, and North America. Reindeer need to live in cold, snowy climates, because that’s where they thrive. If Santa moved to a tropical island, his reindeer would be very unhappy and they would miss their ice-cold home.
Another reason Santa stays in the North Pole is because it’s isolated. Santa and his elves need to work in a quiet environment to get their job done. Santa works with his elves to invent and manufacture all the toys he will give away for Christmas. If they lived in a highly populated, large city, they would never get any work done! They would be too distracted by all the sounds of traffic and people living in the city.
Not to mention, Santa’s workshop is massive. There wouldn’t be enough room for it anywhere other than the North Pole. We are, after all, talking about a workshop that makes toys for billions of children around the globe.
Last but not least, Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, and the elves really like the snow. Snow is heavily associated with Christmas because it snows around Christmas time in many parts of the world. By living in the North Pole, Santa and his family get to enjoy a winter wonderland year-round.
When Did Santa Move to the North Pole?
Santa Claus wasn’t always from the North Pole. The first signs of Santa Claus take us back to the town of Myra in ancient Greece. This is where Saint Nicholas, the predecessor of the current iteration of Santa, once lived in the 4th century. Now, Myra is known as Demre, a town in Turkey. That’s quite a ways away from the North Pole!
Santa didn’t move to the north until 1863. This is when American cartoonist Thomas Nast began submitting Christmas-themed illustrations for Harper’s Weekly magazine. One of the many illustrations he submitted depicted Santa Claus living in “Santa Claussville” in the North Pole. After that, Santa, his family, and his workshop, would always be depicted in the Arctic.
But why did Nast choose to depict Santa in the North Pole? Well, the North Pole was a place of fantasy and intrigue during the 1800s, because it was largely unexplored territory. More than 30 Arctic expeditions were done between 1800 and 1863, but the most famous expedition that made the Arctic gain infamy in the minds of many was Franklin’s lost expedition in 1845.
Franklin’s lost expedition was a British voyage led by Captain John Franklin. Franklin and his crew set sail to explore the Arctic on two ships, but unfortunately, the ships became icebound for more than a year. Franklin and several of his men never made it back. The rest of the crew abandoned ship and disappeared in Canada.
The mysterious passing and disappearance of Franklin’s crew shook the world to its core, and several expeditions were organized to try to find out what happened. The subsequent expeditions fueled the world’s hunger to find out more about the untamable Arctic, and it became a place of myths, magic, and wonder. So naturally, when Thomas Nast illustrated the magical Santa Claus living in such a place, it made perfect sense.
