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.

Source: Johnson City Press.com

By Madison Mathews – Press Staff Writer

With Christmas only a couple of weeks away, Santa Claus and his merry band of elves are working around the clock gathering the wants, wishes and desires of children around the world.

Checking and re-checking his list, making sure Rudolph and the other reindeer are ready for their flight and stocking his sleigh with gift after gift is a lot of work for the man in red. That’s why Santa has dispatched honorary elves all over the world to read through children’s letters so he knows exactly what to pack in his bag before embarking on his journey on Christmas Eve.

Johnson City is lucky enough to have one of Santa’s expert helpers working overtime to gather the region’s letters and send them on their way to Santa’s workshop in the North Pole. Valorie Hall, a city letter carrier, has acted as Santa’s leading Tri-Cities representative since 2005.

Thanks to Hall’s hard work and her constant communication with the bearded one, thousands of letters containing the Christmas wishes of many children have been answered by none other than Kris Kringle himself.

Many of the letters don’t waste any time getting to the point, like one boy who asked Santa for video games, Legos, remote-controlled cars, movies and even a 12-gauge shotgun. Out of the page full of items asked for, the boy left Santa with one more request.

“If I get anything, please let it be a cell phone,” he said.

Other letters start off with children asking for things that will help those around them, like a request from the following girl:

“My wish for Christmas is for all the sick peaple and sick animals to get whell and for the animals, like birds, dogs and cats to find home(s),” she said.

The little girl then continued to ask Santa for a copy of “Ghost Hunters” on video, before making another wish for “orfens” to get toys and for them to find “perents.”

Going through the letters is a lot of work, and Hall said sometimes a child’s letter will really tug on the heartstrings, like one letter written from a boy who only had one wish for this Christmas.

“My wish for Christmas is that the U.S. will bring the troops home,” the boy said.

So far, Hall has received about 200 letters, and there’s still plenty of time to get them to the North Pole, however, she said the sooner a letter arrives at the Carroll Reece U.S. Post Office on North State of Franklin Road, the better. That way, Santa will be able to write a letter back to the child.

When writing a letter to Santa, Hall said there are two very important rules to remember.

“First of all, Santa doesn’t require a stamp, so just send it to the North Pole,” she said.

Hall added that each letter addressed to Santa should include a return address somewhere in the letter or on the envelope, so Santa knows who to write back to.

Once the letter is in St. Nick’s hands, it’s only a matter of time before he uses his holiday magic to send word that he’s working hard to make sure their Christmas wishes will be answered.

“He handles everything. I just make sure they get the letter,” Hall said. “Santa knows everything. He knows if you’ve been bad or good. He’s got the inside scoop.”

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.

Once a year, the Postal Service becomes the North Pole, fielding millions of letters addressed to Santa sent from the less fortunate hoping for a gift this Christmas. “Operation Santa” welcomes people to choose a letter and give a gift to the sender.

Millions of letters containing Christmas wish lists are sent to Santa Claus in the North Pole every year.

And they land in local post offices, where they’re made available to the public, enabling people to play St. Nick and send gifts to needy children who might otherwise get nothing, through a program called Operation Santa.

Pete Fontana, Operation Santa’s head New York City Elf, explained how the program works, on “The Early Show on Saturday Morning.”

Some postal patrons read some of the touching letters, as well, for the sake of viewers.

The Postal Service doesn’t receive tax dollars for “Operation Santa,” and the service’s current financial plight is forcing local offices to make difficult decisions about whether to participate in the optional program.

It is not too late to help! Click here to find Operation Santa USPS locations for Christmas 2011.

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.

Operation Santa

Each winter, the New York City Post Office dedicates a team of workers to opening the millions of letters that pour in for Santa.

Local volunteers also pitch in, offering to buy gifts for needy kids who pen the letters — like one 8-year-old boy whose unemployed father can’t provide him winter clothes.

Together, this team of people make holiday wishes a reality.

NBC Nightly News went behind the scenes at Operation Santa in New York City.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Source: Huffington Post