Moses Lake post office offers North Pole postmark

Matthew Weaver/Columbia Basin HeraldMoses Lake Postmaster Debbie Welden shows off the box in which residents should place completed letters they wish to receive a North Pole postmark Thursday afternoon.

by Matthew Weaver<br>Herald Senior Staff Writer
| December 4, 2007 8:00 PM

Deadline to drop off mail is Dec. 10

MOSES LAKE - Columbia Basin residents can now receive a letter directly from the North Pole.

The Moses Lake Post Office, located at 223 W. Third Ave., is setting out a special box in its lobby in which residents may place letters they would like to have stamped with a North Pole postmark.

"If there are people that want North Pole, than you would address your letters," said Moses Lake Postmaster Debbie Welden. "I'll have a special hold out inside the lobby where we will hold it, because we don't want it to get into regular mail, and then I will send it undercover up to this place that will do it, and then they postmark everything they receive. They stick it back in the mailstream, so it doesn't get postmarked again, so it looks like it came from the North Pole."

As far as Welden knows, this is the first year the special postmark has been offered through the Moses Lake Post Office, but said it's something that she's offered every post office at which she's worked.

Welden joined the Moses Lake Post Office in July, and was sworn in to the position in August.

"It's always been there, it's just very little-known; a lot of places don't do it," she said. "A lot of people like to do it; they can send their Christmas cards. They just have to put their postage and everything on it, and then drop them in a special box, or they'll get into the regular mail."

By sending the mail undercover, Welden saves residents extra postage, but residents may send their letters themselves to North Pole Cancellation, U.S. Postal Service, 5400 Mail Trail; Fairbanks, AK 99709-999.

"You prepare your Christmas cards, you put stamps on them, then you have to put them in another container, so you actually would have to pay to send them to Alaska," Welden explained. "This way, I will send them for you, so it will be free of charge for me to send them to Alaska. Once they get them, they will postmark them and send them back out."

Dec. 10 is final deadline at the Moses Lake Post Office. All cards or letters must be mailed in order for them to arrive in Alaska prior to Dec. 15.

"I just think it's great," Welden said. "Kids love to get the letters. It started about 20 years ago. We did it in Olympia. We actually wrote all the Santa letters to the kids and then we sent them to the North Pole, we did it as a group where I worked. And the kids just loved it, getting the 'North Pole,' especially the kids that could read. It was just something that was really cool. And then they started letting people with their Christmas cards."

Welden is also looking for organizations wishing to answer letters the post office receives from children to Santa.

"We get a lot of letters to Santa," Welden said. "When we pick them up out of mailboxes, the carriers write the address of where they pick them up, because a lot of kids will just take a letter out, put it in the mailbox, not knowing to put an address on it. Then we take them, we bring them in, and if we can find organizations, that's great."

If not, the Moses Lake post office mails the letters to Seattle, where organizations will send replies.

"They kind of try to personalize them a little bit with what kids say in them, so the kids don't just get a generic Santa letter," Welden said.

Organizations interested in answering letters should contact Welden at 509-764-5507.

Response to the programs varies from community to community, Welden said, and often depends on how much time is available before the deadline.

"Usually we don't find out about it until a week before," she said.

For Moses Lake post office patrons, Welden recommends waiting until later in the week to mail.

"We expect super-duper lines on Monday," she said. "If people can withhold mailing, (we urge them) to wait, because Monday is our busiest day and they will have a long wait, because everyone's mailing packages, so it takes a little bit more time. And if they could come in a little bit later and not try to push 5 p.m., then they'll have a better time of not having to wait in line."

Christmas stamps are already on sale, Welden added.