Volunteer elves fulfill Christmas wishes
When Jim Yellig returned home to Santa Claus, Indiana, after years in the Navy, he learned children’s letters to Santa sometimes showed up at the town’s post office. And that the town’s postmaster James Martin answered them.
Yellig, who donned a Santa outfit to entertain children at Christmas events while in the Navy during World War I, decided to help out.
Decades later, Yellig’s daughter, Pat Koch, carries on the tradition her father helped start. She leads a team of volunteers who answer children’s letters to Santa. Letters come from as far as Japan and China, Norway and Sweden. They include drawings and convey emotion. One child, worried Santa might skip his chimney-less home, sent a house key, which was returned. Another seeks a meeting, “I think you and I need to talk, Santa.”
Now 93, Koch has been answering letters since she began helping her father more than 80 years ago. “It is a way of making children so very happy,” she says.
While volunteers in Santa Claus, Indiana, answered 24,800 Santa letters in 2023, (ten times the town’s population), they are not alone in the effort.
Started in 1912, the U. S. Postal Service’s Operation Santa allows volunteers to “adopt” letters at their local post office. Now online, good Samaritans can go to uspsoperationsanta.com to view letters and select wishes to fulfill.
Children’s last names and addresses are redacted for privacy, and volunteers can purchase gifts through a dedicated website to send through the post office. Last year, volunteers adopted 34,664 letters, according to a post office spokesperson.
Children’s letters offer Santa cookies and food for his reindeer. Some go further, “I promise I will be extra better and help everyone,” says Saatvik, 11, from Arizona, in a plea for Lego bricks.
Delia, from Maine, acknowledges some of her friends doubt Santa really exists, but says she believes “because it’s about us, our family and being happy.”
Is Operation Santa nation-wide? YES! #USPSOperationSanta is available in every US state and territory. Learn More: https://t.co/doGKoJ3930 pic.twitter.com/C15aOzxPhP
— USPS Operation Santa (@USPSOpSanta) November 26, 2024
Be An Elf, a nonprofit, promotes Operation Santa on social media and collects donations toward $100 gift cards for children. Patrick Reynolds, the organization’s founder, said answering a child’s wish can bring a sense of joy to someone who might feel lonely during the holidays. “When you do something good, it just feels good, and that is the biggest reward of all,” he said.
As “chief elf,” Koch logs eight-hour days overseeing volunteers who respond to children’s letters from the town of Santa Claus’ historic post office where her father began helping out years ago. While she says some things have changed over time — letters that once asked for warm gloves now might request a computer — others stay the same.
“Santa Claus means to me a person who loves and cares and gives and helps children to find joy and peace,” Koch said. “Doing this makes the Christmas for us.”