Waiting on a reply to a personal letter or note can be a bit on the excruciating side.

Did he get it? Will he reply? What’s he thinking? Is he ignoring me?

But the vast majority of letters, e-mails and now texts sent to Santa Claus each year go unreturned and typically un-worried-over.

Part of our faith in the big guy acknowledges that he’s busy this time of year and unlikely to have time to send a return letter.

Of course, some children do get replies. Santa gets help from the U.S. Postal Service, which allows parents to send a “return” letter to the North Pole where it will be postmarked and sent back to the child. Other, perhaps more privileged children, receive a return word, photo, ornament and stuffed reindeer, courtesy of an online website and $44 of their parents’ money.

And some children really do hear back from Santa, I’m sure.

But most — myself included — simply send their letters off to the North Pole trusting that the true return will come on Christmas morning. It works out most of the time.

Still, letters to Santa are one of our society’s most treasured holiday traditions.

Moms, dads, teachers and other adults love to watch as young children painstakingly list out their requests for Saint Nick. From the first backwards S to the “love you” in the signature, addressing Santa by letter is a rite of passage.

A few years back, when Santa set up his e-mail account, the whole process got quicker and a bit more green — the environmental shade not the Christmas shade.

But for decades Santa and his postal workers have set up letter drop-off locations around the globe to facilitate the process. Among those locations are a big mailbox at the local mall and the community newspaper.

In keeping with our responsibility in the process, The Democrat is accepting any and all letters to Santa here at our office.

We’ll sort, collate and ensure the man in red gets a copy of each letter.

But, before we ship them off, we’ll share them with the community in a special publication we call Holiday Magic.

The upcoming special section will be inserted into the daily newspaper in December, creating a family keepsake for the area children chosen for publication.

So grab your child — or the classroom full of children you teach each day — and take a few moments this week to craft a letter to Santa.

Be sure the child is the primary author, and don’t worry too much about spelling. Santa understands, and this is one time that a misspelled word in the newspaper is kind of cute.

Include the child’s name, age, grade, school and parents’ names and send it on over.

The best and most effective way to ensure that the letter is included in Holiday Magic is to use Santa’s local e-mail address — santa@natchezdemocrat.com.

But if you want to drop off a hard copy, we’ll accept those too. Bring it by the newspaper’s office at 503 N. Canal St., or mail it to Santa c/o The Natchez Democrat, P.O. Box 1447, Natchez, MS, 39121.

We’ve got a lot of work to do in order to get the letters to Santa in time for Christmas so the deadline for your submission to us is Dec. 5.

 

Julie Cooper is the managing editor of The Natchez Democrat. She can be reached at 601-445-3551 or julie.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.