Germany's Christmas post offices start answering children's letters

Volunteers at Lower Saxony's three Christmas post offices in Himmelpforten (Heaven's Gates), Nikolausdorf (St Nicholas' Village) and Himmelsthür (Heaven's Door) are once again answering thousands of letters. St Nicholas is known as Santa Claus in English-speaking countries.

Quite a few of the letters come from abroad, even from Canada, the US and China, said Hubert Weddehage, who is at work with his team in Nikolausdorf.

Occasionally, children wish for peace in the world, said Weddehage, who has been playing the role of Father Christmas for 52 years. He also received a letter from a Ukrainian boy hoping for an end to the war in Ukraine.

The majority of the letters, however, are classic requests for toys, said Weddehage. The children liked to stick pictures from brochures on the letters, so that Father Christmas - or in German tradition also the Baby Jesus, or Christkind - would not bring them the wrong items on Christmas Eve. But many also drew their wish lists.

According to Germany's postal service Deutsche Post, the first letters arrived at the Christmas post offices in the course of the year.

"In our increasingly digitalized world, children can rediscover the special value of writing letters," said Stefan Eckelmann, branch manager of Deutsche Post in Hamburg.

There is no e-mail address for the Christmas post offices: "We are offline," said Weddehage. "We don't even bother with e-mails."

In addition to Himmelsthür, Nikolausdorf and Himmelpforten, there are four other Christmas post offices across Germany.

Already last month, two of the other post offices - in Engelskirchen (Churches of the Angels) in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and Sankt Nikolaus (St Nicholas, or Santa Claus) in Saarland - announced they had started answering letters.

The other two Christmas post offices are Himmelpfort (Heaven's Gate) to the north of Berlin and Himmelstadt (Heaven's Town) in Bavaria.