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French postal service, La Poste, announced that their annual Santa Claus letter drive has begun.<\/p>\n

Children across France can send their letters anytime until December 20th – these can be posted in any postbox in France addressed simply to P\u00e8re No\u00ebl<\/em>, and they will find their way to the man himself.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Santa’s 60 helpful ‘elves’ (postal workers), kids can be sure they will get a response, free of charge.<\/p>\n

And because both Santa and his elves are magic, they can send replies in either English or French.<\/p>\n

The service was first launched in 1962, and it receives around a million letters every year.<\/p>\n

It all began after then-minister for the post and telecommunications, Jacques Marette, heard about two postwomen in Maine-et-Loire and Veules-les-Roses who were taking it upon themselves to answer children’s letters.<\/p>\n

How to write to Santa<\/strong><\/p>\n

These days kids can write to him either by a traditional letter or electronically.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: 14 things you can do at a French post office (apart from post letters)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

If opting for the traditional format, children simply write ‘P\u00e8re No\u00ebl’ as the recipient, with no need for any postage. Be sure that they do not forget to add a return address, in order to get Santa’s response.<\/p>\n

To write electronically, you can click ‘Ecrire au P\u00e8re No\u00ebl’ on La Poste’s website.<\/a><\/p>\n

Letters to the elderly<\/strong><\/p>\n

This year, La Poste has also started a new initiative. They are inviting children to send kind messages to the elderly, in order to bring them ‘warmth and comfort’ (chaleur et r\u00e9confort<\/em>).<\/p>\n

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The postal service will transmit these letters to residents of retirement homes with help from the association ‘1 Lettre, 1 Sourire’ (One Letter, One Smile). More info here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Read More <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

French postal service, La Poste, announced that their annual Santa Claus letter drive has begun. Children across France can send their letters anytime until December 20th – these can be posted in any postbox in France addressed simply to P\u00e8re No\u00ebl, and they will find their way to the man himself. Thanks to Santa’s 60 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rhonejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rhonejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rhonejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhonejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhonejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhonejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhonejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rhonejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhonejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhonejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}