POST OFFICE PUZZLE

Evening Star, Issue 22573, 15 February 1937, Page 11

POST OFFICE PUZZLE

FINDING FATHER CHRISTMAS THE CHILDREN'S MAIL The Post Office, priding itself upon the correct and prompt delivery of millions of packets, every year, is faced about Christmas time with a delicate problem which it has not yet been able to solve. Scores of little New_ Zealanders, happily expecting a visit from Father Christmas, write letters giving that busy personage some definite ideas of what will please them. These letters, usually addressed “ Santa Claus ’’ and nothing more, come into the mails, and the postmen seem not to know how to catch the elusive Father Christmas, for they send all these letters to the Dead Letter Office in Wellington. Reasons for non-delivery of correspondence are usually capable of being expressed in laconic sentences on a few rubber stamps kept in every mail room, and each of these letters to Father Christmas had to be specially marked. The most imaginative effort, possibly the most appropriate, was “ Santa Claus, Dreamland.” This season’s batch of requests to Father Christmas provided a charming picture of the faith of the children jn his capacity to provide a most wonderful assortment of presents. Letters from little girls showed a marked preference for dolls (one request: “ a doll that sleeps, and golden hair”), prams, and dresses. The taste of boys seemed to be more in the direction of bicycles, sports equipment, tool sets, guns, and aeroplanes, while one little hopeful, realising that his presents if they all came would be bulky, wrote: “I hope you are not stuck in our house.” Very few attempts were made to give Father Christmas any more information than a catalogue of presents required, although many correspondents were careful to add an assurance that they had been good children, while one small boy promised: “ If you call I will leave you an apple on the kitchen sink.” It is one of the disappointments of sympathetic postal officials that these letters do not actually reach the personage who distributes such happiness at Christmas time, for he is too übiquitous to carry a postal address. However, the writing of these interesting little notes with the assistance of father and mother probably conveyed the information to the right quarter in some mysterious way. and thus lifted a load of responsihilitr off busy postmen who did not know what to do.