In Canada, what postal code does Santa's letters use?

In Canada, Santa’s letters use the postal code H0H 0H0.

The code is a playful reading of “Ho ho ho,” Santa Claus’s familiar laugh. Canada Post pairs it with the special address “Santa Claus, North Pole, H0H 0H0, Canada.” Children can write to Santa through the program, and Canada Post workers and volunteers answer the letters in the language in which they were written.

The tradition began informally in Montreal in 1974, when postal employees started replying to letters that would otherwise have been treated as undeliverable. Canada Post expanded the initiative nationally in the early 1980s and promised that every letter sent to Santa would receive a response. The program became a major seasonal feature of Canadian postal service.

H0H 0H0 looks like an ordinary Canadian postal code because Canadian codes use alternating letters and numbers, separated by a space. It is actually a special-purpose seasonal code rather than a normal geographic delivery code. The zeroes are numerals, but the visual joke works because they resemble the letter O.

The code is often confused with Canada’s standard A1A 1A1 pattern or invented Santa codes such as V0V 0V0.