With Christmas Day just around the corner, postmen are busy trying to decipher scrawly handwriting on envelopes addressed to Father Christmas.

The destination scribbled on the letters is not always the same. Some want to send it to the North Pole, others to Alaska or Finland, or Reindeerland and one even wrote “The Far Far End”.

However, these hundreds of letters, written with much love and expectation, all have one thing in common: they have no stamp. What do the postmen do with these letters?

“We take them very, very seriously,” said Maltapost’s marketing executive, Yolande Spiteri.

“The letters are brought here and sorted. We keep them in a special pigeon hole and then we send the batches to Santa’s actual address in the Arctic Circle,” she explained.

“If there is the sender’s address written on the back of the envelope, then Santa Claus or his elves usually answer back.”

There is an unofficial agreement between all post offices in the world, she added, so that all letters addressed to Father Christmas are directed to the same destination.

Do they ever open the letters, just out of curiosity, before they send them out?

This query is met by a very stern look – almost worthy of a piece of black coal.

One child worries about the logistics: ‘Father Christmas we don’t have a chimney. How will you get in?’

“Absolutely not. The letters are treated with utmost secrecy, just like we would any other item.”

Maltapost staff guard these letters just like any elf would: “They bring a real cheer over Christmas at our offices.”

Although the letters are not opened, some children are so eager to get the message across that they write their wish list on the envelope.

“I want a Barbie house with a lift and a Barbie house with a pool,” writes a girl called Maya. One wants a One Direction poster and a Playmobil pet shop and another wants “a scooter of the Smurfs”.

Some children, fully aware of how much Santa values good behaviour, plug their cause on the envelope.

A boy called Jayden wrote on top of the address: “I bin (sic) a good boy for years”. Another child has already grasped the fact that a compliment can take you far, writing: “Santa you are the BEST”.

One child worries about the logistics: “Father Christmas we don’t have a chimney. How will you get in?”

Meanwhile, another girl writes on the back of the envelope: “And what do YOU want for Christmas, Santa?”

The addresses throw some light on just how enchanted children are by the Christmas season. One letter is addressed to: “Santa Claus, Christmas House, Heaven Street, North Pole”. Another is addressed to “The Elves Factory” and one to “The Ice House, Snow Street, Antarctica”.

Even the postcodes are very telling, from HO HO HO to SAN TA1 and REIN DEER 01.

And what about those children who still have not written their letter? Is it now too late?

“No, it’s not too late. But get cracking, kids,” said Ms Spiteri, urging children to sharpen their pencils. “Write them quickly so we can make sure that they will reach Santa before Christmas Day.”

Arctic post office

Father Christmas’s post office is on the outskirts of the Arctic Circle, a city where snow covers the ground for half the year and temperatures average a crisp -10˚C during the winter tourist season.

It is so far north that the darkness gives way to a gloom for only about two hours a day at this time of year.

The post office sorts and replies to some of the 550,000 letters that arrive each year.

According to the Universal Postal Union, the trade body for postal services around the world, letters to Santa result in six million extra items of mail for the world’s postal operators to process.

In the age of e-mail, instant messaging and texting, a note to Father Christmas is probably the first letter a child will write. Santa does not reply to e-mails.

kchetcuti@timesofmalta.com