Where Is Santa When You Need Him?

How does he do it? That is, deliver all those packages in one night.

Six days a week, and around this time maybe seven days a week, there are various mail and delivery trucks crisscrossing Jasper County.

Ever since the virus took over our lives, online shopping has become the new national past time with sports taking a back seat.

Holidays this year will be quite different as we try to adjust to drastic changes in family gatherings, attending church and concerts, shopping in stores. As we try to be safe from the virus that seems to be everywhere, one part of our lives has rapidly changed and that is shopping.

Since last March when people realized that close contact with others was not a good idea, in fact, a very dangerous one, most of us have turned to online shopping. Of course, online shopping interest has grown yearly, it has now become a necessity.

We depend on buying everyday items, clothing, food for human and pet consumption, drugs and gifts on the internet and to be shipped to our door. What service provides store to home more than any other service and that would be the United States Post Office.

Most of the deliveries that are made even by Federal Express, United Parcel Service, Amazon and thousands of other shipping companies ends up being delivered by the United States Postal Service (USPS). The funneling from vast warehouses many miles away to your door requires air, rail, truck and sometimes cars driven by independent contract workers such as our rural mail carriers.

According to usps.com in 2019, they delivered 143 billion pieces of mail to 160 million addresses and 46 million rural addresses of which Jasper County would be one of those many rural addresses.

Living in Jasper County we are used to having our mail and packages delayed unlike if we lived in Atlanta proper where vans are out all over town delivering from a close outlet. Sometimes mailboxes are miles apart. If you have ever driven down Georgia Highway 212 you might have noticed that a large panel truck sitting in a parking lot with several smaller vans being loaded from the large truck.

Or maybe in a subdivision like I saw the other day, as a large FedEx truck was loading a smaller FedEx van, visa versa. If you have driven on I-20 or I-75, you will see semi-trailer trucks with postal codes on the side. These trucks are transporting mail, packages of all sizes that were picked up from ships, airports, railroads, and warehouses and brought to large cities to be delivered to the smaller cities such as ours.

As a matter of fact, the very newspaper you are reading was sent to the printer Wednesday morning, returned to Monticello on Wednesday afternoon, distributed all over the county and put into the United States mail so you can receive it on Thursday.

What is amazing besides all that is that a letter being sent across town or to the farthest place in the United States cost the same thing.

If you are sending any kind of mail or packages for pre-Christmas delivery, consider these facts also from the United States Postal Service website. Last year, six billion Christmas cards were sent, between December 16-21, 28 million packages compared to 20.5 million the remainder of the year, and between Thanksgiving and Christmas 800 million packages.

Amazon says they shipped 2.5 billion packages last year, many using the largest shippers, the Post office, FedEx and UPS.

Since 1912, the United States Post Office has been accepting letters to Santa, but this year, 2020, Operation Santa will be nationwide. Through this program you can go online and pick out a letter to Santa to be the secret Santa for a child. Some children ask for toys, games and books, but some children request clothing and shoes for themselves and family members.

Children can write Santa at “Santa Claus, 123 Elf Road, North Pole 88888”. Write the child’s name in the return address area and affix a United States stamp. Children should be accurate, describing the name of the toy, game or book and if requesting clothing, need size and color.

These letters will be available to choose online at “USPSOperationSanta.com starting on December 4th. Deadline for sending the letters is December 15th. You may read specifics about the program at the website. Be a Santa’s helper.