An Post: Time to post Santa letters, kids

HAVE you posted it yet? Children wanting to contact Santa ahead of Christmas have been urged to get scribbling and post their wish list to the North Pole by next Tuesday at the latest.

An Post said yesterday that 80,000 letters have been posted to Santa from Irish children but that if anyone has not yet posted their list they need to do it now if they want a reply.

A spokesperson for An Post said there was no need to put a stamp on the letters to Santa, and the address as the North Pole will do. However, anyone writing and sending a letter to Santa needs to include their own name and address on the letter.

For those of us of an older vintage, An Post said there is still ample time to get sending their Christmas cards. The latest dates for cards and messages to addresses in Ireland is December 19, the same date for letters destined for the North. Letters and cards going to Britain and Europe should be sent by December 18, but the dates have already passed for parcels to the rest of the world.

Anna McHugh of An Post said there had been a surge in the number of people buying the Christmas stamp booklets, but it was too early to say if postal volume was down this Christmas.

“The coming week is the big one,” she said, adding that people were less likely to post their letters on bright, sunny days.

“We would have to expect that it will be down on previous years,” she said of postal volume. “Mail is down 10% anyway and a lot of companies have closed or will be watching their budgets.”

However, An Post still deals with double its usual volume of mail during the festive period and have taken on hundreds of casual staff who will mostly work in the processing centres.

The company has also launched its new online directory in time for the busiest shopping week of the year this coming week, and people can also use the An Post Facebook application.