Press releases

Children’s letters: Swiss Post and Santa Claus

During the Advent period, Santa Claus was again able to count on the valuable assistance of Swiss Post employees, who helped him to reply to 17,149 letters from children. In 2011, there were 16,077 letters.

Rich Content Section

Most of the replies (9,004) were sent to French-speaking Switzerland, 2,786 to Ticino, 2,710 to German-speaking Switzerland and 16 to the Romansh regions. The postal team, comprising six of Santa Claus’s helpers in Chiasso, did their best to track down children who submitted incomplete or imprecise addresses. In this way, it was possible to reply with a small gift to almost 96% of the children’s letters. The total number of replies was thus 16,434, of which 1145 were sent abroad.

Swiss Post is pleased to have performed this pleasurable task with the help of its employees during the recent Christmas period. For over 50 years, the letters - which in postal terms are “undeliverable” - have no longer been stamped “addressee unknown” but sent to the Santa Claus team. There they are sorted by language and - if the quality of the sender’s address permits - a reply is sent in one of the four national languages or in English.

When the campaign was first launched in 1950-51, Swiss Post received 450 letters, 250 of which came from abroad.

Rich Content Section