Santa Claus Post Office wraps up holiday picture postmark season
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Today is the last day to get a holiday picture postmark at the Santa Claus Post Office as the mail facility begins to wrap up its busiest month of 2024.
Each year, people come into town to get the unique imprint on their Christmas cards and other mail as part of the town’s holiday festivities.
“It enhances the mail and the experience here,” said Melissa Arnold, executive director of the Spencer County Visitors Bureau. “Our postal workers who are here are dedicated and do a great job.”
The customized postmark is used to cancel postage stamps on holiday mail every business day in December until Christmas Eve.
“Our goal is to meet as many of the wants and wishes that we can,” said post office clerk Stephanie Coop. “People in general appreciate what we do for them.”
The holiday postmark
The Santa Claus postmaster typically chooses the holiday postmark among submissions from local high school art students. However, because the post office was between postmasters this summer, Coop select the 2024 imprint. The winner was Aubrey Harpe of St. Meinrad.
“Hers is one that we’ve never seen before. It was simple. I thought it would make a good postmark. And honestly, it’s done very well,” Coop said.
People can come to the facility to apply the special insignia themselves or have an employee postmark their mail.
“We’ve had a lot of compliments this year about how simple and easy it was to postmark. [People] like the new stampers because they’re no longer plastic, they’re wood, and they give a little bit more stability, and it’s easier for some of the people to grip and handle the postmark,” said Coop.
Customers can also mail their cards, letters and packages to the post office to get the distinctive postmark—and they don’t have to wait until December.
“We make sure we hold onto them until we have the postmark ready and are able to start using it the first working day of December,” said postmaster Joshua Graham.
“Probably 90% of our stuff comes through the mail,” added Coop. “In the past, that’s probably been more like half and half.”
Because the holiday postmark is different from the normal imprint, the post office had to get approval from headquarters in Washington, D.C., which is required every year.
“There’s paperwork we have to fill out. [Harpe] has to sign off on it. She has to confirm that she didn’t have anybody do it. She didn’t take anybody’s copied artwork,” said Coop. “They approved it in less than eight hours.”
Managing holiday mail
With Graham starting at the Santa Claus Post Office toward the end of October, he had just over a month to get ready for the rollout of the holiday postmark on December 2.
“You could get the feel for [things escalating] probably that week before December hit, just before Thanksgiving,” he said. “Once it was official that people could get [the holiday postmark], then the volume ramped up at that point.”
Coop alerted Graham about the holiday mail experience when he became postmaster. On average, the post office manages 400,000 pieces of mail in December compared to 13,000 pieces of mail per month the rest of the year.
“She’s been telling me what to expect, coaching me where I need help as far as the things that I’m not as accustomed to since my background is delivery,” he said.
Coop, who’s been at the post office for nearly a decade, said she was overwhelmed by the influx of mail during the holiday season in the beginning.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is crazy in December.’ It’s long days,” she said. “I really enjoyed it. And I still enjoy it.”
However, Coop has observed a slowdown in holiday mail traffic in recent years. For example, on the day of this year’s Christmas parade—which is typically a busy day for the post office—the facility wasn’t that busy.
“People don’t seem to be sending cards like they used to. From 10 years ago when I started, I feel like we’re doing nowhere close to that number,” she said. “It’s the cost of postage. It’s the cost of mailing or doing cards in general. I know what I spent in doing 100 [cards], and most people are not going to spend that or don’t need to spend that. People do Facebook and online and all that stuff.”
Staff and customers
When the picture postmark and holiday mail season does get too difficult to handle, the Santa Claus Post Office is able to call for backup.
“You have your postmaster, and you have the two clerks that are assigned to the office, and then you have anyone that you could bring in that are from other offices within typically a 50 mile radius of the post office to come in and help us postmark,” Coop said.
The staff’s goal is to stay on top of the holiday mail daily and leave nothing behind for the next day. But on Saturdays, the post office is only open for two hours in the morning, which can make it challenging to meet that objective.
“Typically Mondays and Fridays are heavier for us. And then Saturdays, you can only imagine with all the extra activities scheduled in town, with parades and stuff, I need two people. One in the back, one in the lobby to help and then two on the front counter,” said Coop.
Coop revels in the responsibilities of the post office during the holiday season and understands what the staff’s work means to customers.
“People come in and want to be doing things that make the holiday more special, and you can’t get that postmark anywhere but in Santa Claus. So that is why they come, or that’s why they mail their stuff to us. And we need to have anybody and everybody who comes to work for us take pride in making sure they meet the requirement that we as a post office require and at the same time comply with what your customer wants,” she said.
However, there’s a common misconception about the holiday postmark that Coop would like to straighten out.
“Everybody thinks it’s a stamp. So some people mail cards without stamps on them, and they think that’s the stamp. It’s actually a postmark. You’re canceling the stamp,” she said.
The post office is located at 45 N Kringle Pl in Santa Claus. You can find guidelines for obtaining the holiday postmark as well as a P.O. box address for mailing cards and letters on the visitors bureau’s website.