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Show Letters to 'Santa9 Overflow Mailbox The Most Famous Resident in the town of Santa Claus, Indiana, population 300, is Santa Clans himself who receives re-ceives well over 100,000 letters annually from children across the country and around the world. As Santa Claus in costume and Jim Yellig out of it, a 42-year career has been devoted to making sure letters are answered. There's something special about Santa Claus in a small southern Indiana town where the famous Christmas legend has become be-come somewhat of an everyday every-day reality. This town with a population popula-tion of about 300 year-round residents, and a family of deer, is the jolly old gent's namesake home Santa Claus, Indiana as well as the home of his helpers, and the location of his overflowing overflow-ing mailbox. A unique landmark at Santa Claus is the U.S. Post Office near the intersection of Indiana highways 162 and 245, and next to the entrance to Santa Claus Land. There is nowhere in the world where you can find a post office like this one. Its architecture is that of a stone-fronted fairyland castle in design and while the community has but slightly more than 300 year-round year-round residents this post office each year is flooded with about four million pieces of mail. The bulk of all this mail comes around Christmas time to receive the cherished Santa Claus postmark. Still others arrive addressed simply to "Santa Claus, 47579." Letters addressed to "Santa Claus" represent the tens of thousands of children's chil-dren's "want lists" that foretell visions of Christmas Christ-mas morning, promise cookies cook-ies and milk, and extend best wishes to Santa, Mrs. Claus, and Rudolph. And, to the delight of children everywhere, all of these letters let-ters receive an answer from Santa Claus. This unique practice dates back to the late 1920s when . Robert L. Ripley popularized the town by featuring it in an article in his "Believe It Or Not" column. After the article appeared, mail began to mushroom, especially letters addressed to "Santa Claus." Tourists with children also al-so started to arrive and make visits to the post office with their Christmas mail, following in the steps of Ripley who also sent his Christmas cards through the office here as proof that there was indeed a Santa Claus as verified by the postmark. For over 40 years, children have met Santa himself, played by Raymond Joseph "Jim" Yellig. Besides taking up the role of Santa Claus at the Santa Claus Post Office in the early ear-ly 1930s, Yellig also embarked em-barked on a project that now involves much of the community of the Santa Claus, Ind. area. He noticed that the incoming letters were being stored away because be-cause there were too many for the postmaster of the day to answer and took pan in hand, along with his wife, to make sure children who cared enough about Santa Claus were answered. |