They’re often addressed to the North Pole or Candy Cane Lane, and requests vary.

A Nintendo DS. A skateboard ramp. A job for Dad.

The U.S. Postal Service in Maine has received double the number of letters to Santa this year over last, some sweet, some troubling, some from adults.

Spokesman Tom Rizzo said postal volunteers, subbing as Santa’s elves, mailed 1,100 replies last week. Another 100 or 200 letters have come in since.

“We see some wonderful sentiment in them and more than our share of stories of distress,” he said Tuesday, the last day letters could be answered and still arrive before Christmas.

“They’re asking Santa for a job (for Mom or Dad) so they don’t fight in the home so much. Some of them, your imagination can’t come up with some of the stories we get this time of year.”

Ten postal employees, working on their own time on “Operation Santa,” put in hours writing out envelopes and picking from about a half-dozen form letters that start “Dear little friend” and “Dear my friend.”

Kids are thanked for their notes and encouraged to be good, Rizzo said.

Denise Gonneville of Saco, a financial control and support analyst for the Postal Service, said she opened letters that asked for world peace, money and Sony PlayStations.

“There was one, he wanted wood to build a skateboard ramp. He wanted nails, he wanted a hammer,” she said. “That was cute, I thought.”

Gonneville found a few to Santa that were clearly penned by adults. One woman wanted help with a drinking problem.

Another “had just lost her twin sister. She wanted a sign she was still around us. It was touching,” Gonneville said.

Though adults made up a small number overall, there were more than usual, Rizzo said. “They want something to believe in. They sound very, very lonely, very desperate and alienated.”

Since 1912, post offices around the country have answered kids’ letters to Santa, sometimes by hand, sometimes taking Santa’s place and surprising letter writers with gifts. Regulations have tightened in recent years on letting the public participate, most recently in reaction to the discovery in New York of a registered sex offender signing up to help.

In Maine, postal employees thought they would get to 90 percent of the letters, Rizzo said.

“Last year, we answered all of them, but we answered half as many,” he said. What has struck him: “A lot of these letters, the kids are wise and charitable beyond their years.”

Kids asked for other kids to be out of the hospital in time for Christmas. They asked for gifts for a little brother or little sister. They also asked where Santa kept his reindeer and how he got into chimney-less homes.