However, these hundreds of letters, written with much love and expectation, all have one thing in common: they have no stamp. What do the postmen do with these letters? I want a Barbie house with a lift and a Barbie house with a pool,” writes a girl called Maya. One wants a One Direction poster and a Playmobil pet shop and another wants “a scooter of the Smurfs”.

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One child worries about the logistics: “Father Christmas we don’t have a chimney. How will you get in?” It is so far north that the darkness gives way to a gloom for only about two hours a day at this time of year.Although the letters are not opened, some children are so eager to get the message across that they write their wish list on the envelope. According to the Universal Postal Union, the trade body for postal services around the world, letters to Santa result in six million extra items of mail for the world’s postal operators to process. One child worries about the logistics: ‘Father Christmas we don’t have a chimney. How will you get in?’

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The destination scribbled on the letters is not always the same. Some want to send it to the North Pole, others to Alaska or Finland, or Reindeerland and one even wrote “The Far Far End”. Some children, fully aware of how much Santa values good behaviour, plug their cause on the envelope. Father Christmas’s post office is on the outskirts of the Arctic Circle, a city where snow covers the ground for half the year and temperatures average a crisp -10˚C during the winter tourist season. Maltapost staff guard these letters just like any elf would: “They bring a real cheer over Christmas at our offices.”

Arctic post office