Would the post office really deliver Santa Claus's mail to some guy claiming to be him?
A key scene in "Miracle on 34th Street" involves the US Post Office delivering -- to a man in a courtroom for a hearing regarding his sanity, who claims to be Santa Claus -- hundreds of kids' letters addressed to Santa Claus, without a valid mailing address (because **SPOILER* Santa Claus does not really exist).
In real life, would the US Post Office really hand over children's mail to a man claiming to be Santa Claus, particularly in a courtroom setting?
Best Answer
In principle, the answer is "yes" but not in the way that you mean. The USPS operates a scheme known as 'Letters to Santa' in which members of public can agree to adopt letters that are addressed to Santa Claus or Father Christmas (e.g. without a valid address). These letters can then be responded to with the requested gift and a brief letter in response.
There's no obvious legal impediment to one individual offering to accept every single letter although it would be unlikely that the USPS would actually agree to do this unless they were 100% certain that the recipient could realistically afford to give a gift to every letter they accepted.
Pictures about "Would the post office really deliver Santa Claus's mail to some guy claiming to be him?"
US Postal Service will deliver letters to and from Santa
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Liza Summer, Kindel Media, Mikhail Nilov, Mikhail Nilov