The temperature faded toward freezing Saturday afternoon as Vena “Teddy” Giles sat back on her living room couch in Franklin and pulled a piece of blue construction paper out of an envelope addressed to the North Pole.

“Dear Santa,” she read. “I would like a Game Boy.”

In another letter, a girl named Hannah asked for a toy and promised to leave Saint Nick a piece of pie and some salad should he drop down her chimney this Christmas Eve.

The envelopes piled like snowflakes around Giles, who for 35 years has been receiving letters to Santa Claus from hundreds of hopeful children around Hancock County.

Most children get right to the point, listing the toys they hope to receive in the opening lines of their letters. There are promises of milk and cookies and affirmations that they’ll be nice instead of naughty from now on.

One girl even asked Santa to bring her a moose.

With less than a week to go before Christmas, the jolly man in the red suit has a full plate. He is making his list and checking it twice, but he needs a little help keeping up with his correspondence. That’s where the 73-year-old Giles comes in.

The retired postal worker reads and responds to every letter on Santa’s behalf.

“They will mention things they want,” she said, her eyes lighting up as brightly as her battery-operated Christmas bulb earrings. “Some of the things I’ve never even heard of.”

It all started in 1970, after Giles took a job as a rural mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service. While delivering holiday packages to folks in places such as Mariaville and Otis, she noticed children’s letters to the North Pole were starting to pile up. She asked her boss whether she could respond to them, and the answer was yes.

“Then, after I retired in 1997, they let me keep doing it,” said Giles, a former selectman who has six grown children, 12 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. She also has the tallest flagpole in Franklin, which may explain how Santa keeps track of her.

In the beginning, Giles received about 20 letters each holiday season. Now she gets 150 or so from children in towns like Lamoine, Ellsworth and Gouldsboro, making her almost as busy as Santa himself.

The envelopes, addressed simply to “Santa Claus, North Pole,” start showing up right after Thanksgiving and keep coming until Christmas. Some kids even send thank-you notes after the holiday passes.

“The postmasters all around know to send me the letters,” she said. “Yesterday I got 13.”

Now and then, Giles recognizes the child’s name because she answered a letter from the mother or father years ago. Most children ask for presents, but a few also make wishes for other people.

A boy in Surry listed a few toys he hoped to receive but then closed his letter with this postscript: “I was wondering if my family could have money for gas and house payments.”

Another writer, a little girl, asked him to bring new houses to those left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.

“I told her Santa would do the best he could but that was a pretty big order to fill,” Giles said.

One of her favorite letters came from a boy who asked the man in charge of the sleigh to keep his reindeer off the roof because last year’s visit resulted in a few broken shingles.

Another boy promised to leave Santa a tomato as a snack on Christmas Eve.

“I said, ‘Oh, Santa loves tomatoes,'” Giles said.

It takes many hours to respond to the children’s messages, but Giles seems to relish it. Each reply is different, with information about what the elves are doing in their workshop or what the reindeer like to eat. She finishes every one with a red-ink stamp of “11 Candy Cane Lane” as a return address.

Knowing how pleased the children must be to hear back from Santa makes the work worthwhile, she said. And if it means one more generation will keep believing in Santa, she will keep at it.

“I think the kids have just gotten used to getting letters from Santa Claus,” she said.

“It’s a lot of satisfaction. I’m sure I’ll be doing it a few more years.”