They're making it harder to be one of Santa's helpers.
The other day I went to the majestic main post office in Manhattan to do what thousands of other New Yorkers do this time of year: leaf through a stack of letters addressed to Santa.
The idea is to find one that strikes a chord and then play Santa to the writer — usually a kid or a mom — by sending the presents they asked for.
I didn't pick the kid asking for "Call of Duty." (It's hard to imagine someone who will.) But I found a mom requesting clothes for her three children, and boots, "or if you could bring them a toy, I would appreciate it." Something about toys being almost too much to ask for — a distant third — made me choose her letter.
"Can I send a check?" I asked the man in charge of Operation Santa here, Pete Fontana. He's too tall to be an elf, but otherwise perfect for the part: kindly, jolly, dedicated. He's been running New York's program for 16 years.
No checks, Pete said apologetically. Not anymore.
Why not? They have your name and address on them.
So? Operation Santa no longer allows the giver and recipient to have any direct communication.
The reason? Pedophile panic.
That's my term, not his. But it's the right one.
No one wants pedophiles preying on kids via Operation Santa, of course. But there's no evidence that they are.
"Heaven forbid — no, no!" said Darlene Reid, a Post Office spokeswoman, when I asked if there'd been any untoward incidents involving Santa's assistants. But our society narrows its eyes at any adult eager to help a child, so the bureaucracy roared in to solve a problem that didn't exist.
Starting in 2006, the Post Office began requiring volunteers to present photo ID and fill out a form listing the name and address of the letters they were responding to.
As of 2007, according to the Postal Service, customers also had to sign a form agreeing not to misuse any of the information in the letters. (Boy, does that sound like an effective crime deterrent.)
In 2008, when a registered sex offender went to pick up a Santa letter in Maryland, a postal worker recognized him and interceded. That incident almost killed Operation Santa outright — even though the registrant never got the letter.
And even though we also have no evidence he was going to do anything nefarious. (And even though the Sex Offender Registry itself is a mess, filled with lots of teens who had consensual sex with slightly younger teens — but that's another column.)
The Postal Service suspended Operation Santa for three days — but it didn't kill the program outright. It just came out with newer, even more convoluted rules.
As of 2009, any folks interested in answering a Santa letter now must go to the PO, register their name, get an official number, sign the "I'm not a creep" form and then receive a stack of photocopied Santa letters. Each copy has the recipient's last name and address redacted in black Magic Marker by a postal worker, adding all the charm of a police report.
Should you choose to fulfill a letter, you must bring the gift back to that Post Office (forget UPS or FedEx), whereupon you pay the postage but don't see where it's going. A postal worker finds the letter on file and discretely addresses the box.
The Santa regulations were put in place, according to spokeswoman Reid, "out of an abundance of concern and respect."
Seems to me the government lawyers are showing an abundance of ability to gum up things that had been working just fine.
Operation Santa began 101 years ago. It gets literally millions of letters a year. It is only our modern-day, litigious, fearful, child-danger-obsessed society that has dreamed up all these hoops a do-gooder must leap through.
And while Reid says the Post Office can't tell if these have resulted in fewer letters answered — it doesn't keep track — my years on earth have shown me: The more complicated something becomes, the less likely someone is to do it.
So, to save children from a nearly nonexistent danger, we may actually be saving fewer children from a truly miserable Christmas.
Ho ho ho.
Lenore Skenazy is author of the book and blog "Free-Range Kids."
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