What is Operation Santa?

Every year, for over 100 years, USPS Operation Santa receives hundreds of thousands of letters to Santa from children all over the country. These letters are sorted and published securely online so people can adopt letters and fulfill holiday wishes. While most letter writers ask for toys and games, others wish for basic necessities. 

How is Mommy Poppins helping this year?

The Mommy Poppins team will be donning our elf ears and helping Santa shop, wrap, and ship gifts on behalf of our communities, getting much-needed cheer out to the children that need it most, with your help. We’ll be accepting small donations as well as adding our own funds, but most importantly, our volunteers will be doing all the shopping, wrapping, and shipping, so you can help without it taking up your already stretched-too-thin time. And by shopping at small businesses we also hope to help support our local business communities.

How can you help?

Working together makes everything more special, so we invite you to join us with a $2 donation to help us fulfill an Operation Santa letter for a child in need this holiday season. We will combine all the donations with our own funds to purchase, wrap, and ship gifts.  

To donate, Venmo $2 to MommyPoppins.  

We will post updates of your donations and our progress toward our goal, as well as show the purchases made and gifts being sent, for full transparency as well as to share the joy. If you’d like to sponsor a full letter on your own, you can join our team on the Operation Santa website and select a letter to fulfill on your own, making a child’s holiday brighter, and helping us reach or exceed our goal of fulfilling 10 children’s holiday wishes.

How else can you participate?

Whether you're able to donate or not, there are many ways you can help:

• Share this post with your friends and family using the share links at the top of the article. 
• Follow along and engage with our Facebook or Instagram stories to help them get seen by more people. (Find our local social links in the top menu or sidebar).
• Purchase your activities through Mommy Poppins. When you buy activities using the book it function in our activity calendar, we get a portion of each sale, which supports the work we do. This December we will dedicate that revenue toward Operation Santa gifts so you can help other families while entertaining your own. Another bonus for you: there are no fees on top of the ticket prices sold on our site--and we often even have exclusive discounts. Not only doesn’t it cost you a penny extra, it can even save you money, while helping give to children in need.

RELATED: How to Find Free Toys for Kids This Holiday Season

We'll answer a few of the thousands of letters the USPS receives each season. Photo via the USPS

How did Operation Santa get its start? 

The Postal Service—then the Post Office Department—began receiving letters to Santa Claus more than 100 years ago. In 1912, Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock authorized local Postmasters to allow postal employees and citizens to respond to the letters—a program that eventually became known as Operation Santa. By the 1940s, mail volume for Santa increased to the point that the Postal Service invited charitable organizations and corporations to participate by providing written responses and small gifts. Throughout the years, the program blossomed and took on a life of its own. Now, people can go online and help make the holiday season that much more magical for those in need. 

The USPS released a documentary about the program for 2020, aptly titled Operation Santa.

Find more ways to spread holiday cheer and give back in our local Holiday and Christmas Fun Guides.