Santa Claus not to answer all letters due to financial cuts

Children writing to Santa Claus in Finland may not get any response this year, or if they get one, it could only be in English.

Half a million people, presumably mainly children, wrote to Santa Claus in Finland last year, and those giving a complete, clear return address were supposed to have received a printed response telling about Finland and its Lapland area where Santa Claus supposedly lives.

Due to savings measures at the decade-old Santa Claus postal office, only "a few thousand" responses will be sent this year and these will be written in English only, Xinhua news agency cited Ulla Seppala, director of consumer letters at the postal service, as telling Finnish magazine Seura.

Auli Sihvo, the foreman of the Santa Claus post office located in Rovaniemi, told Seura that children worldwide write to Santa Clause about their wishes and their lives but they probably cannot even imagine that they would get a response.

However, she assured that all letters would be opened this year even though a response might not be sent.

Santa Claus responses have been a successful brand for the Nordic country. Last year China became the main source of letters, surpassing earlier major senders such as Britain and Poland.

The response from Santa Claus has been written in numerous languages, but this year children worldwide will receive English letters only.

So far, the Santa Claus postal service has got a small compensation from the government. Last year, it was 84,000 euros (about $91,560), but the post office has decided not to apply for the assistance for 2015.

Director Seppala was quoted by Seura as saying that "filing the application was also a cumbersome process". She was not willing to specify the size of the savings the postal service will make by reducing operations.

In the bigger picture, the Finnish national postal service has been reducing its staff in recent years. Last autumn, the services of 239 employees were terminated throughout Finland.