There is no truth to the rumor, by the way, that your editor was recently employed by Canada’s Post Office. From last Friday’s Ottawa Citizen and Richard Barnes :

There was absolutely nothing Ho Ho Ho about the letters Rosalyn Da Costa’s children got from Santa yesterday.In fact, they included filthy messages.

They are two of 10, inappropriate letters dropped in mailboxes across Ottawa in the last two days, but there could be more.

When Mrs. Da Costa went for the mail at her Coulter Place home in Orléans yesterday morning, she was thrilled to see Santa had answered letters from two-year-old Maya and 10-year-old Colton.

“My first thought was to wait until Colton got home from school so he could sit and read them with her,” she said. “I’ve done this every year since he was a baby and he loves getting a letter from Santa.”

She was happy she changed her mind.

“I told Maya: ‘There’s a letter from Santa just for you, let’s read it’. We sat down on the couch, I opened the letter and began to read. My mouth dropped open: ‘Oh, my god!’ “

Each Santa letter Canada Post delivers contains the same main message with a hand-written personal postscript.

Maya’s personal “P.S.” said: “This letter is too long, you dumb s—.”

“I went straight to Google, got the Canada Post number and called,” said Ms. Da Costa. “A very nice lady at a call centre in Fredericton, New Brunswick, was shocked, and when I told her I also had a letter for Colton and was planning to let him read it when he got home, she said I should open it now just in case.”

Ms. Da Costa went downstairs, picked up the letter and returned to the phone. What she read had both ladies gasping. “Oh, my god! Oh, my god!,” they kept repeating.

The personal P.S. to Colton’s letter read: “Your mom sucks d— and your Dad is gay”

This brought a Canada Post supervisor to the phone.

“We were both going: ‘My god, I can’t believe it,’ ” Ms. Da Costa said. “He said: ‘That’s like dirt in my mouth. I can’t even say it.’ “

Shocking stuff, indeed. Why can’t the people of Ottawa show the same kind of Christmas spirit recently displayed in Spokane, WA?