SF Post Office Responds to Letters from Santa

Turns out that the post office does more than deliver the mail, come rain, sleet, snow, or hail.

It will also play the role of Santa Claus.

Letters to the North Pole addressed to Kris Kringle -- the mystical jolly red-suited man who delivers gifts to the entire world in the span of a single night every Dec. 24 -- have been intercepted by volunteers at a San Francisco post office, where the wishes to Santa will be fulfilled by the post office, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

(Spoiler alert.)

This tradition, called Operation Letters to Santa, has been a post office mainstay since 1912. Last year, some 260 volunteers bought gifts or wrote responses to 300 children -- and it's not only kids who take advantage of generosity: at least one letter this year was written by a single mother, who asked for clothes and a stroller for her young child.

The requests run from the predictable to the fantastic: phones with unlimited minutes, fairy dust, health, world peace, these kinds of Christmas things.

The common thread is that there aren't enough resources to fulfill wishes, and intervention from Santa is necessary.