Letters from Père Noël

It has been a French tradition since the year of 1962 that all letters which kids
write to Père Noël must be responded to with a postcard from Père Noël.

This tradition started with Magdeleine Homo in the 1950s, who was a postal
worker from Veules-les-Roses, in Normandy. Typically, letters written to Père Noël
were destroyed. They would be sent to the National Dead Letters Office in Paris.
However, Magdeleine took it upon herself to begin to open these letters and reply to
them.

This idea was actually made official in 1962 by the Ministère des Postes,
Jacques Marette. The first (official) response ever sent by the post office was written by
his sister, Françoise Dolto.

This service has now been running for more than 50 years. There are 60
volunteer postal workers who are in charge of sending the responses, from their office
in Libourne. The letters sent have to have “Père Noël” on the envelope, and have to
have the name and address of the child written as the return address, so the postal
workers know where to send the response. Letters need to be sent before December
22nd, to be sure that there will be a response.

There is a list of addresses to which letters can be addressed. These include:

– Père Noël au Pôle Nord – 33500 Libourne – France

– Le Père Noël – 33500 Libourne – France

– Père Noël au pays des jouets – 33500 Libourne – France

– Papa Noël au rue des étoiles filantes au ciel – 33500 Libourne – France

This is internationally known, as the office in past years has received more than
1.2 million letters and 123,600 emails. I have posted a link below on how to write an
email letter to Père Noël to the French post office, if you or anyone you know would like
to receive a letter (this article translates the instructions from French to English so you
are easily able to navigate the site).

https://www.colleensparis.com/christmas-in-paris-2/how-to-write-a-letter-to-the-french-
santa/
https://pere-noel.laposte.fr/

Assignment

For our assignment today, we will be taking part in the tradition that Magdeleine
Homo started, and writing a response from Père Noël to a child that we know. You are
going to use the postcard template provided to write a letter from Père Noël to a child
that you know.

If you do not celebrate Christmas and would not like to write a letter from Père
Noël, that is fine. You can instead write a letter of gratitude to someone that you know
using the postcard template, or make a themed postcard for a holiday that you celebrate
or is important to you.

In addition to writing a letter, you are going to decorate the other side of the
postcard with drawings or pictures (like what they do on regular postcards). If you have
colored pencils, markers, or crayons, you can use those, or you can draw using a
pencil. Additionally, if you are working online, you can use Kami!