regional customs
300,000 letters arrived at Christmas post offices
Letters with wish lists are in the Christmas post office of Deutsche Post. photo
© Henning Kaiser/dpa
Wish lists are piling up in the Christmas post office in Engelskirchen. A girl wants her gifts sent to Africa. Others want striped socks.
Just a few days before Christmas, hundreds of thousands of wish lists have already arrived at Christmas post offices. In the Christkind post office in Engelskirchen near Cologne alone there are more than 100,000 so far, said spokeswoman Britta Töllner when asked. “We are always amazed and delighted by the original formulations and wishes.” More than 200,000 letters have already been counted in Himmelpfort in Brandenburg.
Mail is also piling up elsewhere, for example Nikolaus post office in St. Nikolaus, Saarland. “The feeling is that there are a lot of them, around 27,000 to 28,000,” said the head of the children’s letter campaign, Sabine Gerecke. A team of around 45 people will answer all letters. “We’ve been in continuous operation for six weeks.”
There are seven Christmas post offices nationwide where children can send their letters to Santa Claus, the Christ Child or St. Nicholas – three of which are in Lower Saxony. One of them is in Himmelsthür near Hildesheim: “So far, 30,000 have been received, all of which have been answered,” said a spokesman for Deutsche Post.
As a rule, the balance is only drawn after the festival. In Himmelpfort in the north of Brandenburg, the post office there only closes on Christmas Eve. Last year, according to Deutsche Post, around 310,000 letters were received from children in 60 countries.
Since many letters arrive at the St. Nicholas post office from abroad, answers are available in Ukrainian, Hungarian, Russian, Spanish, English and Chinese, among others. According to Gerecke, the letters come from all over the world, but most of them come from children in Germany.
Children often thought about the situation in the world, according to the Christkind post office in Engelskirchen. A girl named Hermine asked for the gifts to be forwarded to Africa. Clara wanted “no more people to go hungry.” One boy wished for peace in Ukraine, Israel and the whole world and “for everyone to have food and drink and a place to live.”
The range of wishes includes precisely described products and also gifts that cost nothing: from the Playstation to striped socks to a walk with grandma.