It’s always Christmas in Santa Claus, Ind.
SANTA CLAUS, Ind. – The streets have names such as Candy Cane Lane, Christmas Boulevard and Mistletoe Drive.
Bigger-than-life statues of Old Saint Nick and red buildings with green roofs are everywhere.
The grocery carts at Holiday Foods are red and green, and the Christmas tree in the lobby at Santa’s Lodge hotel is never taken down.
There’s the Silent Night Cafe, Lake Rudolph Campground and R.V. Resort, Frosty’s Fun Center miniature golf and arcade, and Santa’s Medical Center.
Every day is Christmas Day in this Southern Indiana town of 2,320 – a number that has more than doubled since 1990.
“The town oozes holiday spirit,” says Melissa Miller, executive director of the Spencer County Visitors Bureau. “There are no grinches here.”
Settled more than 150 years ago by German immigrants – the ancient Santa Claus Cemetery is filled with headstones bearing names such as Bockstahler, Grundhoefer and Schaaf – the settlement originally was known as Santa Fe (pronounced Santa Fee).
But when the town of about 50 applied for a post office in 1856, it had to change its name because there already was a Santa Fe, Ind.
Just how the townsfolk settled on “Santa Claus” has been lost to legend.
Allegedly, during a town meeting to choose a new name on Christmas Eve, a brisk winter’s wind blew the door open and the sound of sleigh bells was heard in the distance. An excited little girl shouted, “It’s Santa Claus!”
Now at its fourth location at the north end of the Kringle Place shopping center, the world’s only post office bearing the name of Santa Claus receives more than a half-million pieces of mail a year – about 10,000 of them from children addressed to Santa, and the rest from adults wanting the Santa Claus, Ind., postmark on their Christmas cards.
Every year since postmaster general James Martin did it in 1914, volunteers (they call themselves Santa’s elves) have sent handwritten replies from Santa to the children.
According to postmaster Marian Balbach, the post office usually gets about 13,000 pieces a month.
“We do more than that each day during the Christmas season,” she says.
The post office’s claim to fame has not been without controversy. In 1931, U.S. Postmaster General Walter F. Brown tried to force the town to give up its name to ease the load of mail received around Christmas.
But with the support of Robert “Believe It or Not” Ripley and The Indianapolis News, which asked its readers to send letters of protest to the paper, Santa Claus was saved.
Newspaper clippings chronicling the controversy, plus photos, memorabilia and letters to Santa dating back to the 1930s, fill the Santa Claus Museum two doors down from the post office.
Exhibits in five rooms detail the history of the town and its post office as well as the evolution of Santa Claus Land into today’s award-winning Holiday World, which draws a million visitors a year.
“I love it here,” says Kevin Klosowski, who restored and re-opened Santa’s Candy Castle candy shop and its museum in 2006. “It’s quiet. It’s safe. It’s friendly.
“I have three kids … and I have a choice of two four-star schools they can go to. I love the family values here. And the cost of living is incredible.”
No grinches, either.