Alaska Dispatch

According to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, the U.S. Postal Service will postmark holiday letters requesting a North Pole postmark in Anchorage this year to save money and hassle for its Fairbanks office. That news has North Pole, a town that depends on holiday-related mythology, pretty mad. North Pole Mayor Doug Isaacson told the News-Miner, "It's ridiculous." Isaacson said that postmarking the letters in Anchorage is misleading and, "at least Fairbanks isn't that far away." Read more here. Alaska Beat wonders why the perennially cash-strapped USPS doesn't just stamp letters requesting the holiday postmark wherever they're first received. Tucson, Fort Collins, Marquette, Atlanta...what's the difference? Also, in other Santa-related, North Pole news, the Postal Service is enacting strict, costly security measures for its program to send children's letters to Santa's elves across the country, perhaps causing the demise of a volunteer letter-answering service in North Pole more than half a century old. Postal Service officials say the new policy is needed because of security concerns that children's addresses may fall into the hands of child predators. Mayor Isaacson is calling on Alaska's congressional delegation to rein in the Postal Service, which Isaacson believes is "running roughshod" over the city of North Pole. Read more here.