It doesn’t have a catchy name and you won’t see it in any advertising campaign, but Monday was an important day in the Christmas season.
It was the last day the United States Postal Service could guarantee delivery by Christmas Day, a fact not lost on Dante’ Davis of Columbus.
“I definitely felt like I needed to get down here now,” said Davis, who arrived at the main Post Office on Bluecutt Road at 9 a.m. hoping to avoid a long line. “I had sent some other packages early, and they got there four days after they were supposed to. So, this close to Christmas, I didn’t want to take any chances.”
USPS estimated it will have sent 800 million packages between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day and will deliver 20 million packages every day between today and Christmas.
While the two weeks before Christmas are always the busiest time for USPS, this year the impact of COVID-19 has meant greater volume than ever. Public health officials are encouraging people to stay home and celebrate Christmas with only members of their immediate family. That means shipping packages that would otherwise be delivered in person.
Davis is one of those who will heed that advice.
“I’m from Detroit and normally I do go home for Christmas, but not this year,” said Davis, who was shipping to Detroit the gifts she would normally be sharing with her family in person.
Betty Roach, the supervising officer at the Starkville Post Office, said that in her 35 years with USPS she’s never seen the volume of Christmas shopping she’s seeing now.
“I would say it’s double, sometimes triple, the amount,” Roach said. “Right now, we’re backed up so bad we can’t breathe. In addition to our mail carriers, we have package carriers going out every morning at 6. We’re going 24 hours a day and delivering on Sundays, too.”
Roach said the crunch not only comes from those sending packages to loved ones but from other customers, too.
“It’s not just the regular Post Office service,” she said. “We’re also delivering for Amazon and all of the other carriers — FedEx, DHL, all of those carriers.”
Although the deadline for guaranteed delivery has passed, Roach encouraged people to remain calm.
“Don’t panic,” she said. “We’re going to do everything we can do to get your packages delivered by Christmas. We’re in the same boat. If you’re working for the postal service right now, you don’t have time to shop. I know I haven’t.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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