'Dear Santa' Letters Get Nasty

Dec. 18, 2007 — -- The holiday cheer in one Canadian city was stifled last week when as many as 15 children received nasty letters signed by their favorite holiday icon: Santa Claus.

Canada Post's annual "Write to Santa" Program encourages kids to send letters to Santa -- addressed to the North Pole, ZIP code 'H0H0H0' -- and for the past 26 years has succeeded in responding to every single child.

Each letter is fairly generic and varies only slightly, just in case more than one letter goes to the same household.

But what's really special about the program is what's at the very end of the letters.

An estimated 11,000 Canada Post volunteers -- current employees and retirees -- add a personal touch to the letters by hand writing a postscript on every one, making sure to reference something specific to the Santa-seeker.

But this year, a not-so-helpful elf seems to have infiltrated the system, adding nasty and obscene postscripts on the reply letters in Ottawa.

"We're committed to not letting this rogue elf impact this beautiful tradition for the children in Ottawa and across Canada who are expecting letters from Santa," said Cindy Daoust, a Canada Post spokeswoman, who said that the volunteers were devastated when they heard the news, many of whom have even offered to take lie-detector tests to exonerate themselves.

The investigation into who is responsible is still ongoing, but Daoust told ABC News that the post office shut down the "Write to Santa" program for two days, and in the process intercepted at least one nasty note that had yet to be delivered. Daoust said that she believes that note will provide a helpful clue in finding the person -- or persons -- responsible for the prank.

The Ottawa Police Department has also joined the investigation.

"My son must have used 20 pages of paper and wrote [his letter to Santa] in red ink because it had to be perfect," said Ottawa resident Rosalyn Da Costa, whose 11-year-old son, Colton, was one of the 15 who received mean Santa letters. "This blew it right out of the water for him. Now he says 'there really isn't a Santa.'"