As you know, Santa has an enormous list of children who are expecting him to deliver Christmas goodies on Christmas Eve.

In order to track Santa’s progress around the world, NORAD has organized a global tracking system to help you determine when you can expect Santa to arrive in your neighborhood.

Remember to put out milk and cookies for Santa and even some reindeer food before saying your prayers and nodding off to sleep.

Click here to track Santa!

USPS carrier not allowed to deliver while wearing Santa suit.

By NAT LEVY
Bellevue Reporter Staff Writer

While dreams of Santa popping down the chimney on Christmas Eve to deliver presents were extinguished for most during childhood, a select few Bellevue residents have seen St. Nick trade in his sleigh for a mail truck.

Until now.

For more than a decade now, letter carrier Bob McLean has driven around Bellevue each holiday season, delivering a little Christmas cheer while wearing a full Santa getup for two or three days. But this year, a local grinch complained to the U.S. Postal Service, and McLean has been banned from bringing his alter ego to work this year.

“The government is shutting me down because it’s a non-postal regulation uniform,” said McLean, who has been with the postal service since 1971.

McLean began donning the red and white when a stranger at the mall told him he looked like Santa Claus. Always the crowd pleaser, McLean took to the comparison, went out and bought a suit, and then another.

When he first started delivering mail in full Santa garb, McLean immediately noticed the attention. He said he’s caused traffic jams on his route on Old Main as passing drivers attempted to catch a glimpse. Merchants along his route have watched for years as McLean has been the center of attention to tourists and residents alike.

“They stop him on the corner and want group pictures with him,” said Brenda Archuletta, manager of Amore Chocolates. “Little kids – they just stare because they wonder.”

They wonder because he fits the character. Every bit Kris Kringle, McLean sports a white beard and a tuft of long white hair. Looking the part is no easy effort, either. He dyes his blond hair, and keeps a careful eye on the calendar when he trims the beard.

The only part of the Santa look he lacks is the portly figure, after losing 95 pounds.

McLean has brought his alter ego to Bellevue’s most popular Christmas attraction, Snowflake Lane, where he took his family a few years ago. He said they were pushed aside as 50 people lined up to take pictures.

He’s also been a big hit at the Aegis Living of Bellevue senior center. He visits regularly as both Santa and mailman. The residents know him well, and  are always excited when Santa knows their name, he said.

But only a few days after Thanksgiving this year, he was pulled off his route by a supervisor saying someone had complained about the uniform. He didn’t know who he had upset, or why the complaint was filed.

“This was the first time; I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I don’t step on anyone’s toes. Being Santa isn’t religious to me; it’s secular. It’s about giving.”

USPS spokesman Ernie Swanson said the complaint came from a fellow carrier. Decked out in the full on Santa suit, McLean was not recognizable as a USPS employee.

McLean is still shocked over the outcome. He sees carriers wearing Christmas gear all the time. Either way, McLean said, he will bring the Christmas cheer, and he plans to don the Santa suit at work one last time: Christmas Eve.

Bob McLean delivers mail along his route while dressed as Santa Claus in 2009. CHAD COLEMAN, Bellevue Reporter File Photo

Contact Bellevue Reporter Staff Writer Nat Levy at nlevy@bellevuereporter.com or 425-453-4290.

SANTA GETS EXTRA SUPPORT FROM SOME UNEXPECTED HELPERS

By: Jahkedda Akbar and Ariel Merrick, Common Cents Interns

“We have $500 to buy items for needy families,” fifth grade students from PS 163 in Manhattan explained as they rode the subway to the 34^th Street Post Office. They headed there, led by Sue Knaster, the school’s Math Coach, as part of a “Dear Santa” Neighborhood Service project they organized to help families during the holidays. The students were excited to help, but knew they would have a difficult task ahead: they could only choose 3 families to support.

At the Post Office, the students headed right to the Santa Station — a section of the post office where all of the “Dear Santa” letters are kept during the holidays – and gathered around a long table. Dear Santa is a national program run by the United States Postal Service each year to help families in need during the holiday season. Children and parents write letters and then local donors purchase items they request. This year, the students at PS 163 decided to be the local donors and help brighten the holidays.  

At the post office, students were given a batch of Dear Santa letters to consider. One student commented, “I don’t know how many of these I can read. It’s so sad.” They were shocked to find families that did not have basic necessities like clothing. After reading several letters, each student selected at least one family they wanted to help.

After two hours the group decided to help three families and set off to buy the items on the list. Together, the students walked to a local clothing store, split into groups – one for each family – and scoured for the best deals and the items they thought were the nicest – they wanted each family to have a big Christmas with lots of gifts. Each group had $100 to spend; one student asked, “If we don’t go over $100, can we buy something for the mother too.” Another student followed by asking if she could contribute her own money if they needed more.

After the shopping was complete, the students returned to school to wrap the gifts and prepare them for Christmas morning. By the end of the day, it was clear that not only would these families have a happier Christmas, but the students would as well.

by Eric Gonzales / KENS 5

There are two places in Texas you can get a hold of Santa by mail. One of those places is at the Blanco, Texas post office.

Blanco got a new postmaster in October and she started a program called Operation Santa.

“The children write the letters to Santa. We accept them here and then we find individuals to help Santa,” said Blanco postmaster, Tina Kmetz.

She says the locals help out by adopting the letters. So far, there has been a 100 percent response rate back to the kids.

The postal service calls the responders “postal elves” and say the program has been going on for almost 100 years.

“Dear Santa, how do you fill your sock up with those toys, and how do your reindeer fly? I’ve been pretty good this year with just a little bad, “ one of the letters reads.

Tina says she has been impressed how local Blanconians have stepped up and adopted the letters.

The downtown Fort Myers, Florida post office is participating in Operation Santa Claus for the first time this year.

Starting Friday, December 9, 2011 local residents and businesses can help children’s wishes come true by visiting the post office at 1350 Monroe St., Fort Myers.

“Postal Elves” go through the letters to Santa Claus and sort out those that express serious need.

After completing an application and providing photo ID, local individuals see the letters and choose a child to adopt. Any identification of the child or his/her address is obliterated.

“They can choose a local family or they can choose somebody from (another city),” said Lee County postal service spokeswoman Debra Mitchell, adding she’s received two letters from The Bronx in New York City. “We’re on a list of 75 cities participating.”

Each applicant is asked to buy as many of the gifts requested in the letter as possible.

They will be required to return to the downtown Fort Myers post office with the wrapped presents boxed and ready to mail to the child’s parents. Each applicant will be required to pay postage to mail the box and the return address will be Operation Santa – North Pole.

Local businesses are encouraged to participate in Operation Santa Claus. Businesses can designate a representative and choose up to 10 letters.

For more information about Operation Santa Claus or to obtain the forms required to participate, email debra.j.mitchell@usps.com or call 239-573-9638.

Source: Huffington Post

NEW YORK — Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and Recession. Santa’s got a new reindeer to wrangle, and it’s sending hundreds of thousands of desperate kids to the post office for presents.

Pete Fontana, a 60-year-old wise-cracking son of Bensonhurst, has been working the elf business for the post office since 1995. But he’s never seen a Christmas like this, the 99th year of “Operation Santa,” which was immortalized in movies like “Miracle on 34th Street.”

“Within the last year or so, kids are not asking just for themselves anymore,” said Fontana, a customer relations coordinator who was recently promoted to become the USPS “chief elf officer.”

“Sometimes not for themselves at all, but for their mom, or their siblings,” Fontana said. “That really touches you.”

Operation Santa places volunteers at 75 post offices in charge of buying presents for the underprivileged who write in. Last year the New York branch of the post office got some 1.7 million letters from kids and parents in need. Even as the economy supposedly gets better, Fontana said he thinks he’ll see two million letters this year.

The holidays, he said, are “the toughest time for people in need. That’s when you feel it more than any other time of the year, is when you can’t do something for your kids, or your family, under the tree or put a dinner on the table.”

With so much demand, Fontana guesses that only about 50,000 of New York’s neediest will see their wishes come true. But it’s not hard picking out those who could use a helping hand the most, he said: “you can tell.”

Growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, Fontana remembered, “We were fortunate. We weren’t rich, but I used to have four or five gifts to open up every year, and I was one of five kids.”

These days, one of every four children under the age of six is living in poverty. That’s 5.9 million kids in 2010, up from 5.7 million in 2009. The health and educational effects of those early lean years can linger throughout one’s life.

So Fontana and his merry band of 20 temps and one other full-time staffer work their mightiest to make at least one day happy. From mid-November until the first week of January, he is sometimes in the office 14 hours a day to make sure that those kids get at least one little smile.

After the letters come in, he and his team sort them, redact any identifying information, and give them to ordinary citizens — “atheists, Jewish folks, Muslims, Buddhists, you name it” — to pick out presents on their own dime. Then those volunteers bring the packages back, along with a number that lets the post office know which kid to send them to, and pay for the postage.

The USPS, which will soon be slashing 100,000 jobs and slowing first-class delivery times, has taken plenty of hits lately. But so far, Fontana said, Operation Santa has gone unaffected.

“The postal service understands how important this program is. It’s a shining star right now when we’re going through some very difficult times. We’re in survival mode,” Fontana said.

Fontana reads plenty of the letters himself. Contrary to the stereotype of the lazy postman, he also winds up delivering some of them by hand.

He’s seeing the most growth in letters to Santa among single moms and senior citizens. Grandparents, he said, are often “on a fixed income. They’re really feeling the pinch of the economy. One letter I just read, they wanted a turkey. That’s all they wanted — a turkey for Christmas dinner.”

Another letter Fontana showed HuffPost was written in Spanish from a mother of three from the Bronx. She was writing in to ask for Christmas help this year, she said, because she was unemployed.

All of it can take an emotional toll on Fontana, who has one adult-age daughter of his own. But the worry wears off when he goes into the office and interacts with volunteers, some of them children themselves.

“I love it. I love what we do here,” Fontana said. “I can’t see anyone else running this.”

But he can see taking a break. “In January I’m going down to Aruba for a week, just to catch up with myself, you know? Lay in the sun with the umbrella drink. I just reflect on the roller coaster ride this has been.”

New Yorkers who want to volunteer for “Operation Santa” can visit the Farley Post Office in Manhattan. For a list of participating post offices nationwide, click here. For background on Operation Santa from the post office, click here.

This is the time of year that we all see those wonderful red Salvation Army kettles in front of stores. Millions of dollars are donated each year in the Christmas spirit by shoppers. These donations provide Christmas dinners, clothing and toys for families in need. Financial assistance also helps with basic necessities.

In this economy, now more than ever, charities like Operation Santa and the Salvation Army need your help.

If you are a family who needs help from the Salvation Army here are some tips to get you started.

1. Contact your local Salvation Army office to inquire about registrations dates and times for the annual Christmas Assistance program. You will need to know if they have registrations on specific days and times or if they require you to make an appointment. Remember, they are VERY busy this time of year, so please be patient and polite.
2. Ask about the documents required of you. At a bare minimum you will be asked to provide identification for each family member. You may also need to provide a birth certificate health card, shot record or family services print out to verify your children’s date of birth. You may be asked to provide proof of income, so take a copy of your most recent paycheck stub, bank statement or a financial statement from a local human services office.
3. Arrive at the designated facility promptly and with all required documents. Complete the paperwork, including a holiday basket application. Some agencies offer Christmas holiday boxes during the registration period. In other cases the applicants apply for a gift basket for future pick up.