Picture this: it’s the holiday season, you’re just an eight-year-old little kid and you write a letter to Santa in hopes that you might get to talk to him about what you’ve been wishing for – maybe that’s a gift or maybe it’s just a chat with someone you think has your back.
This program allows for volunteers to adopt letters that have been sent in. If you do decide to partake in the program you only have to go through a short registration and ID verification process. You then get to pick the letter(s) of your choosing. After choosing, you sign an official form and once you’ve obtained the letter/gift you’d like to send back, the USPS handles getting the letter/gift back to the adoptee. This year, this program became a little more accessible, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, for the first time nationwide these letters will be digital so that volunteers can sift through the cards a whole lot easier. Access to these cards will begin on December 4th through the Operation Santa website.
One such previous card has gone viral on Twitterr written by a child named Will who wrote a card to Santa asking, “Do you support the LGBTQ community and if you can speak to god can you tell him I love him, and if he loves me for being gay”. Although he wasn’t asking for anything material, volunteers can still write back as “Santa”; widespread support was shown towards Will whose identity has, of course, been heavily protected by the USPS. Letters such as this one or even cards where kids are asking for basic necessities flood the program, so whether you choose to find a letter to write back to or maybe gift some slime to a little kid and make someone’s day, this program is a very heartfelt and giving one that you may consider participating in this holiday season.