'It's Santa's magic,' said Deutsche Post spokeswoman Tina Birke during a busy afternoon at the German postal service's special branch office. 'The children put so much work into the letters that it's nice when they receive an answer.'
Himmelpfort (Heaven's Gate) has run Santa's postal operation since 1984, when two or three German kids tended to their letters to Santa and sent them here. They trusted that as a result of the town's name, Santa should live here.
A local postwoman chose to answer them herself, and word rapidly spread that Himmelpfort was the spot to reach Santa. Developing at a steady pace, the letters blasted in number after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Presently the town of 500 occupants gets more than 300,000 letters to Santa every year from 69 nations, including the United States.
The official address: An den Weihnachtsmann (To Santa Claus), Weihnachtspostfiliale (Santa's Post Office Branch), 16798 Himmelpfort, Deutschland (Germany). But some make it here addressed simply 'To Santa.'
The letters can be heart-twisting, uplifting or amusing. A few kids request toys and the most recent electronic gadget. Others request their sick parent to show signs of improvement or a wish for a relative. One significant letter originated from a kid who needed his younger sibling to develop teeth soon with the goal that they could eat together.
Santa Clause and his helpers, generally nearby occupants dressed as angels in flowing silky white outfits, compose handwritten reactions in dialects running from English to Lithuanian. These are stamped with a special seasonal stamp of Santa Claus surrounded by festive stars.
Some children can't wait until Christmas: By summer, the town had received 7,700 letters waiting to be answered, Birke said. By its official opening Nov.10, it had already received 23,255 missives.
The holiday spirit in Himmelpfort, whose establishing dates back to 1299, is not simply constrained to the mail station, which sits toward the end of the main street, checked by a giddy wooden elf holding a letter over a post box.
The Weihnachtshaus (Christmas House) Himmelpfort and bistro, the town's year-round Christmas-themed obed and breakfast next door, is beautified just as it were December throughout the entire year, with a historical centre in the back representing Santa's abode, from his bed to work area. Every day in the season, children and grown-ups visit from Berlin and surrounding towns. They pose for photographs with Santa sitting in his huge seat, meet his 'angels' and sometimes send letters and packages in colorful Christmas-themed boxes from the working post office.
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