Holiday Mailing Tips

Holiday Mailing Tips: From GovGab

"The United States Postal Service estimates that roughly 97 million customers visit the post office during the holidays. Are you going to be one of the many standing in line this year to buy your Christmas stamps, purchase your boxes, or mail your gifts to your loved ones?

Well, you don't have to! The USPS Holiday page is organized to help you streamline your holiday postal tasks. Unless you have decided to send an alpaca from the Andes to your Aunt Agatha in Anchorage (try saying that fast 3 times), almost everything that you need to do can be done online.


My husband does a lot of shipping, so he ordered multiple-sizes of the free flat rate boxes and had them delivered to our home. With the flat rate boxes, you choose the proper size box to mail your item for one flat rate, regardless of the weight. I suppose if you were shipping very heavy gold bricks, there might be a problem, but as the USPS says, “If it fits, it ships.” Two days ago, hubby wanted to ship a gift, so he went online to print the postage and scheduled the package pickup. The next day, our postal carrier came to the door to pick up the package.
That is how easy it was.


The USPS has some Mailing Tips to Avoid Holiday Glitches and Quick Tips for Holiday Mailing that will ensure your
package makes the journey smoothly. If you are sending a gift to a
loved one in the military, the USPS has a Shipping Gifts to Military Addresses page that has some helpful guidance and USA.gov Search has links to additional resources when sending gifts to military personnel.


Did you know that the USPS has a Letters to Santa Program? Every year the USPS gets
many letters from children that are addressed to Santa. In 1912 the Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock authorized a program called Operation Santa that allows local postal employees and citizens to respond to the letters. Today, postal facilities in cities around the country allow charitable organizations, major corporations, local businesses and individuals to adopt letters to Santa.


Although the Postal Service Mailing Statistics page doesn't have
any statistics about how many Andean alpacas have been sent to Anchorage during the holidays (a statistic that I was very curious about), it does have some other amazing numbers. Let's just say there is a whole lot of activity for the USPS during the holidays, so be smart and take care of your holiday mailing early.


P.S., here is a bonus photo of the Andean alpaca. His name? Albert, of course!

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