Best Guide to USPS Operation Santa®

You can adopt real letters to Santa written by underprivileged kids and send your gifts directly to the children who wrote to him. There’s no middle man or charity; it’s micro-philanthropy, direct from you to a child when you give in this way.

Every December since 1912, the USPS Operation Santa ® has permitted the public to read and adopt children’s letters to Santa. Many are written by kids and Moms who ask only for “a warm coat for my 5 year old,” “new shoes, size 6,” or other basic necessities. Volunteers at Christmas may mail their gifts directly to children who need a brighter Christmas.

Letters from kids and some struggling parents will be available for adoption starting November 20th, 2023 at  USPSoperationSanta.com®. Postal elves select letters for the site, and they are pouring  in daily.

Be An Elf is a tax-exempt charity not affiliated with USPS® Operation Santa®, but we support it by creating public awareness of the program at this website and in social media. Every year we recruit many new volunteers who adopt letters, and we also offer tips to needy families writing to Santa.

If you don’t have time to adopt a letter and send gifts, Be An Elf will do it for you. We use a portion of our tax-deductible donations to adopt letters and send gifts to the families who wrote them.

Be An Elf’s Seeking Gifts? page offers a simple explanation of the program to kids who find the website, and assures them that Postal elves put every child’s letter back in the mail to Santa the same day, and that he will deliver his gifts on Christmas eve, too. The page also offers smart tips for parents who are struggling financially and seeking help with Christmas this year.

This year Be An Elf added a new team-building guide for company employees and management on our new Company Christmas Charity page.

Some volunteers feel alone and sad over the holidays, and find comfort and inspiration adopting a child’s letter. Others have families and include their kids to teach them the meaning of Christmas.

Anyone can print out a letter they adopt from the USPS Operation Santa ® website, together with a barcoded shipping label. To protect children’s privacy, of course USPS® staff redact family names and addresses from letters before posting them online.

Volunteers who adopt letters can mail their gifts at any of 19,000 US postal branches that offer “label scanning”. A barcoded shipping label prints out with every letter adopted. See our How to mail gifts page to find a branch near you. 

Packages with gifts should be mailed by December 17th to get there in time for Christmas, but post offices will accept packages for mailing up until mid-January.

Be An Elf adopts letters only through the USPS® website, and the number of letters we are able to adopt increases as we receive tax-deductible donations from the public. 

We do not adopt emails sent to us using the contact form at this site, but if you contact us anyway, before you click on submit, copy your message, print it out, and then mail the print to Santa at his special address on our Seeking Gifts? page. Stamps are required, or the USPS® will return your letter undelivered. 

Every year, we get hundreds of moving emails, many asking for new shoes for kids, clothes, and other basic needs. Again, we urge you to mail your letter to Santa at his special address on our Seeking Gifts? page. 

As donations permit, we do adopt letters from the USPS® website, and mail the Mom a Target gift card. Our donors get a tax deduction, and we have faith that the Moms know best what their kids want or need most. We enclose the gift card in a Christmas card with a note saying simply, “This is for your kids. Love, Santa.”

Tax-deductible donations may be made to Be An Elf using our Donate page. Your contribution to Be An Elf will help us send more gifts to low-income families in time for Christmas. 

Whether you donate or adopt a letter and send gifts, you will bring joy to more kids on Christmas morning.  You’ll catch the true spirit of the holidays and help put smiles on the faces of needy kids on Christmas morning.

Thanks for being an Elf! Please share this website on your social media, and share one of our sample tweets and posts.

A short history of the recent transition from the traditional walk-in program to online

From 1912 to 2019 the USPS® welcomed walk-in volunteers to read and adopt letters in person at select branches alongside other volunteers.

In the year of Covid, 2020, the Postal Service® took the program online and expanded access to all Americans nationwide.  The same year the Postal Service® canceled the traditional walk-in program at the last two branches that still offered it, New York City and Chicago.  

Our news releases in our Press Room ask editors to cover the USPS Operation Santa® story, and mention Be An Elf as a resource for Christmas volunteers and for those Seeking Gifts. 

When the below MSNBC news interview was filmed in 2011, Christmas volunteers could still walk in and adopt letters at select postal branches. Operation Santa is now fully online, and while it’s no longer possible to read letters in person, this report captures the emotions so many volunteers experience.