Santa Demystifies Wiggling Down the Chimney in Letter to Boy, 7

Santa has a special emissary in the Michigan town of Lowell, where there’s so much holiday spirit it may be in the running for a mention among America’s most amazing Christmas towns. (Photo licensed under Wikimedia Creative Commons.)

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Who says Santa doesn’t answer those sans-postage letters with scarcely more than a scribbled North Pole address that kids drop into mailboxes around Thanksgiving time?

Not 7-year-old Adam Smith of Lowell. He received a response from the mythical – or is he? – creature who makes children’s Christmas wishes come true, the Detroit Free Press reports.

And it wasn’t a cursory note acknowledging receipt of the letter and promising a review by overworked elves who have a lot of other children’s wishes to consider, too.

Santa answered specific questions – how he manages to wiggle down chimneys, for example – and some Adam hadn’t asked – like why, in a poof of magic dust, he no longer enters children’s homes through the small metal stoves used for home heating way back in time.

Furnaces, it seems, changed everything.

Adam’s mother, Michelle Smith, said she had forgotten her son had written the letter and was more surprised than he was when Santa’s pages-long response showed up in the mail.

So, did Santa really write the letter?

Well, no.

But who’s to say he didn’t dictate it to the anonymous postal carrier who has been reading and replying to Lowell children’s letters to Santa – about 30 a year – since 1993?

“He’s kindhearted,” Sue Dombrowski, a supervisor with the Lowell post office, said. “He’s been doing it for years.”

Michelle Smith said the extra effort is greatly aprpeciated.

“For little kids,” she said, “this is a huge deal.”

What Is It About Lowell?

If Lowell and Christmas seem to go together in your mind like Santa and kids, it may be because you’re remembering what was maybe the best cop Christmas story ever.

Police officers in Lowell teamed up with a cable network, stopped motorists for minor offenses while the television crew eavesdropped by radio from a big-box store, then gave them gifts instead of tickets.

Who knows, bursting-with-holiday-cheer postal workers and police officers may be enough to land Lowell on the 2015 list of the 17 most-amazing Christmas towns in America compiled by food, drink and all-things-cool arbiter Impulcity.

Two Michigan locations made the list in 2014 – No. 4 Frankenmuth, due mainly to the world-famous Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland, which offers a sea of decorations so vast that it’s almost a city in itself; and No. 12 Mackinac Island, where scenes of horse-drawn carriages look like they belong on a Currier & Ives teacup. No motorized traffic is allowed there.

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