A fun children’s competition postbox has unwittingly tricked St Albans residents this Christmas.
Early December, shopping centre Christopher Place erected a fake letterbox outside Cath Kidston to collect the entries of a children’s Christmas Drawing competition.
It was covered in plastic snow, had a poster for the contest where collection times would normally be found, and in place of the standard ‘ER’ was a big gold ‘SC’ for Santa Claus.
Youngsters were invited to post their festive drawings and be in with a chance of winning a £50 St Albans Gift Card.
However, when the contest ended on December 18 and Christopher Place manager Catherine Morris opened the cylinder, it was full of regular letters.
She said: “I saw the pile of post, and I thought ‘This can’t be all for the competition, it must be something else’, and then I saw nearly every letter had a stamp.”
People had tried to post business correspondence, personal cards, and redirected letters - many of which were wet because the plastic structure was not designed as a real postbox.
Drying them off, Catherine and her team sorted and reposted them in an official Royal Mail letterbox.
She believes residents were confused by this year’s Polar Bear Plunge yarnbomb, which saw 23 postboxes around the district decorated with festive woollen toppers to raise awareness of a charity event.
On January 1, brave fundraisers will jump into the icy water of Cottonmill Lane’s St Albans Sub Aqua Club to raise money for The Ollie Foundation, Earthworks and The Counselling Foundation.
Catherine added: “From a distance it looks like a normal postbox which has been decorated - whoever did those toppers has confused a lot of people.
“It just shows that people sometimes don’t look at things properly!”
She said that the Christmas decoration around Christopher Place, including Santa and his sleigh, has delighted children this December and received positive feedback from the community.
Eden, Bessie, and Phoebe won the drawing competition and received their voucher on December 22.
Find out more about the Polar Bear Plunge at www.polarbearplunge.org.uk
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