A universal tradition associated with Christmas is that of gift giving. And Santa Claus is an integral figure connected with the entire concept of giving out Christmas gifts .The existence of Santa Claus is based on the European folk tale of the historical figure of St. Nicholas, a bishop from Myra, who was famous for giving out gifts to the poor. His deeds of charity came into limelight when a man who has lost his fortune and was not able to support his three daughters and was going to give them over to life prostitution, received huge amount of gold from St. Nicholas.
This led to the creation of the mythical figure of Santa Claus who was known to be a jolly fellow dressed up in a red coat, fur boots and long white beard and is known to deliver presents to the children. Knowing the popularity of Santa Claus in mind many rituals have been associated with the figure of Santa Claus. One most popular ritual associated with Santa Claus is that of the letters to Santa Claus written by children. These letters to Santa Claus normally contain the wish list of toys, cookies, gifts and even assertions of good behavior.
According to a popular research there is a huge variety of the style of letters written by both boys and girls. The letters to Santa Claus written by girls are more polite, longer and have requests for gifts for other people also. At the time of Christmas, many post offices also allow children to send letters to Santa Claus. These letters are answered by the postal workers themselves or by some volunteers hired by the post office.
Canada post even has a special postal code for the letters to Santa Claus and the address given out by them is: Santa Claus, North Pole, Canada, H0H 0H0. In Britain it is a common ritual to burn the Christmas letters in fire so that they can be magically transferred to North Pole. According to a recent calculation the Santa Claus of Finland has till date received about eight million letters. He receives 600,000 letters every year from 150 countries.
The maximum of these letters come from the children of Great Britain, Poland and Japan. The residence of the Finnish Santa Claus is said to be Korvatunturi but his official address is said to be Rovaniemi at the Arctic circle. The complete address for the Santa Claus's office is: Santa Claus, Santa Claus Village, FIN-96930 Arctic Circle, Finland
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