Christmas post office
Christmas post offices or Christmas post offices are facilities to which children, in particular , can send Christmas letters during the Advent season , which are usually answered.
description
Letters to Christmas post offices give the children the impression that they can actually communicate with Santa Claus , Nicholas , the Christ Child or a similar mythical symbolic figure of the Christmas gift giving.
The answer is either free of charge or against return postage. Usually a standardized form with child-friendly, Christmas motifs is used. Occasionally, however, the letter writers also receive a personal reply. If you want the answer from Santa Claus, Nicholas or Christ Child in time for Christmas , you usually have to send your letter to the Christmas post office by mid-December at the latest.
Most letters to the Christmas post offices come from children and contain wish lists with requests for certain toys, sweets or other consumer items. In the letters, which are often lovingly illustrated with drawings, some children also pour out their hearts to Santa Claus and express immaterial wishes, for example for peace, security, an intact family, health, better school performance, the recovery of a sick relative or even just white people Christmas .
Christmas post offices exist in several countries of the German-speaking, Scandinavian and Anglo-American cultural areas and are maintained there by different organizations and companies, mostly by the respective postal organization . In German-speaking countries, they were set up in the local post offices of a few smaller towns whose names have a certain linguistic reference to Christmas.
The Christmas service is also used by many adults to send Christmas greetings to friends, relatives and acquaintances. Because most Christmas post offices use special Christmas postage stamps and / or special stamps for their reply letters . This visually highlights the envelopes used and also makes them interesting collector's items that are coveted by philatelists . For stamp collectors, extra special prints are sometimes issued, which can be obtained from the respective Christmas post office.
Country specifics
Germany
In Germany, the Christmas post offices were operated by the Deutsche Bundespost . This tradition is being continued by Deutsche Post AG . Although there have actually only been “post offices” or “post agencies” since the post office was privatized in 1995, the term “post office” adopted by the authorities has remained in common usage up to now. As a result, the term “Christmas post office” or “Santa Claus post office” continues to be used (the latter being a protected trademark). The Deutsche Post AG officially calls it Christmas post office, but sometimes also "Christkind office", "Christmas office" or "Himmelsbüro".
In Germany, not only postal workers but also voluntary helpers answer Christmas mail. They are also prepared for letters from children from other countries and send the answers in different languages.
Recently, some Christmas mail branches have come under pressure as Deutsche Post AG has increasingly reduced its branch network and, in this context, has switched to closing its branches in smaller towns or districts. For example, the “Heavenly Post Office” in the Hildesheim district of Himmelsthür , which first functioned as a Christmas post office in 1967 and is therefore the oldest Christmas post office in Germany, was abandoned by the post office. The Christmas tradition has been retained so far: letters “to Santa Claus in Himmelsthür” will continue to be answered.
The Christmas post office in Himmelpfort near Fürstenberg / Havel , which was closed by Deutsche Post AG in 2005, had a similar experience . The Christmas mail is now being answered in Santa's “office”.
The “Christkindbüro” has existed in Engelskirchen since 1985; up to 140,000 wish lists arrive there and are answered by 20 helpers.
Since 1966, Nikolaus from St. Nikolaus (Großrosseln) has been answering children's letters from all over the world. In 1967 the Deutsche Post introduced the first special St. Nicholas postmark. To date, around 35 volunteers have answered the approximately 24,000 children's letters. These are then stamped (still with a special cancellation) in the Nikolaus post office in St. Nikolaus, which is set up and opened every year from December 5th to 24th. The festival committee St. Nikolaus eV had the term “Nikolauspostamt” protected as a trademark at the German Patent and Trademark Office in August 2019 .
Children's letters to Santa Claus, Nicholas or Christkind that end up in the mailbox without an exact address are also received: Deutsche Post AG forwards them to one of the Christmas post offices or the St. Nicholas post office.
In order to separate the processing of children's letters from the stamp requests of the collectors, the Deutsche Post AG has a respective secondary stamp in one of its three stamp locations.
| Christmas post office / branch | state | address | Stamp office for collectors *) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engelskirchen | North Rhine-Westphalia | To the Christkind 51777 Engelskirchen |
Bonn |
| Himmelsberg | Thuringia | To Santa Claus 99706 Himmelsberg |
|
| Himmelpfort | Brandenburg | To Santa Claus Christmas post office 16798 Himmelpfort |
Berlin |
| Himmelpforten | Lower Saxony | To Santa Claus 21709 Himmelpforten |
Berlin |
| Sky city | Bavaria | To the Christ Child 97267 Himmelstadt |
Willows in the Upper Palatinate |
| Heaven's door | Lower Saxony | To Santa Claus Himmelsthür, 31137 Hildesheim |
Bonn |
| Heaven | Lower Saxony | To Santa Claus in Himmelreich 31535 Neustadt am Rübenberge |
|
| Nikolausdorf | Lower Saxony | To Santa Claus in Nikolausdorf 49681 Garrel |
Bonn |
| St. Nicholas | Saarland | To St. Nicholas
Nikolausplatz |
Willows in the Upper Palatinate |
- Berlin stamp office: Deutsche Post AG, letter branch, special cancellation office, 10770 Berlin
- Bonn stamp office: Deutsche Post AG, letter branch, special stamp office, 53253 Bonn
- Stamp office Weiden: Deutsche Post AG, Philately Branch, special stamp office, 92637 Weiden in the Upper Palatinate
Austria
The Austrian Christmas post office is located in the small town of Christkindl in Upper Austria .
Address:
Post office Christkindl
Christkindlweg 6
4411 Christkindl
Switzerland
In Switzerland , too , children's letters to the Christ Child or the Swiss “Samichlaus” are answered. The Christmas post offices in Bern-Bethlehem and Wienacht-Tobel ( Lutzenberg ) have now been closed. The children's letters are now being sent to the central Swiss Post office in Chiasso , where they are also processed.
Addresses:
To the Christkind
9405 Wienacht-Tobel
To the Christkind
3027 Bethlehem
Worldwide
In 2010 no letters were answered in Greenland due to financial constraints.
literature
- Horst Halbach: Post to Santa Claus - The post office in Himmelpforten . In: The archive - magazine for the history of communication, published by the DGPT in cooperation with the Museum Foundation Post and Telecommunications , issue 4/2011, pp. 32–33, ISSN 1611-0838
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The devil is loose in the Christkind office . In: FAZ , December 23, 2009, p. N6
- ↑ Wochenspiegel Großrosseln and WS Völklingen: Now officially registered trademark. Saarländisches Wochenblatt, August 20, 2019, accessed on August 22, 2019
- ↑ Santa Claus is bankrupt