Santa and Frosty Celebrates Today’s Holidays On the Busiest Mailing Day at the Carol Stream Post Office

Knit One. Mail, Too — Knitting demonstration with Holiday Knits stamps

What:
In celebration of December 17 being the busiest mailing day of the year, Santa and Frosty will welcome kids of all ages during demonstrations of the Automated Postal Center and usps.com online services featuring Click-N-Ship, Carrier Pick-Up and the NetPost Card Store. There will also be a knitting demonstration in honor of the Holiday Knits stamps.

When:
Monday, December 17, 2007
10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Where:
Carol Stream Post Office, 550 E. Fullerton Ave., Carol Stream, IL 60188

Who:
Santa Claus
Frosty the snowman
Local knitting enthusiast
Postal Service representatives providing holiday mailing tips and demonstrations of Click-N-Ship, Carrier Pick-Up, NetPost Card Store, and usps.com.

Story lines:
Holidays by the Numbers: 275 million First-Class cards and letters to be mailed on Dec. 17, the busiest mailing day of the year. The Postal Service will deliver 20 billion cards, letters and packages between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.

Log on and Step Inside a Post Office: The Internet is always open, and so is the U.S. Postal Service. Postal Service employees will be on-hand to demonstrate USPS' online suite of services including cyber tours of CardStore, an online product that allows customers to create, address and mail holiday cards. See the latest innovations available to make mailing holiday greetings and presents quick, easy and convenient.

The Knitting Revolution: Knitting is enjoying a surge of popularity among the young and hip. There is a very active knitting blog community and many yarn stores are as much social scenes as they are commodity shops.

Today’s Holidays Need Today’s Mail: This year, the Postal Service is giving customers something they can really use. More time. From flat-rate boxes and free package pickup to environmentally friendly packaging and military Care Kits, the Postal Service plans on helping make the holidays a little brighter.

Automated Postal Centers (APCs) in Post Office lobbies are a real help for the holidays. The ATM-like kiosks accept credit or debit cards and can handle about 80 percent of typical postal transactions — like weigh packages and buying postage for Express, Priority, First-Class and Parcel Post mail.

Contacts:
Tim Ratliff, 630-260-5606, cell 630-853-8926, timothy.d.ratliff@usps.gov

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Please Note: For broadcast quality video and audio, photo stills and other media resources, visit the USPS Newsroom at www.usps.com/news.

An independent federal agency, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that visits every address in the nation, 146 million homes and businesses, six days a week. It has 37,000 retail locations and relies on the sale of postage, products, and services to pay for operating expenses, not tax dollars. The Postal Service has annual revenues of $75 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail.