The Hague, the Netherlands, 8 December 2023 (Day of the Christmas card) – PostNL will be delivering millions of season’s greetings in the Netherlands in the holiday season that’s nearly here. Sending a Christmas or New Year’s card is a wonderful gesture to let people know you’re thinking of them. PostNL considers it an honour to deliver all these season’s greetings and New Year wishes, and has made a great many preparations.
On a regular day, some 15,000 PostNL postmen and women will deliver an average 7.4 million mail items a day. December is the perfect time for people to send cards to let each other know they’re thinking of one another, taking the number of mail items in the festive period up to 1.5 times higher than normal. And, of course, it’s crucially important that these wonderful holiday greetings make it to their recipients on time.
Sipke Spoelstra, Director of Operations at PostNL’s mail business, is in charge of adapting its operational processes to this massive peak in activity. He says: “Everyone across our postal business will be pulling their weight in the next days and weeks to get this great job done. We’ve brought in new people and it’s now a tradition in our company that people from our offices come and lend a helping hand as well. We don’t normally deliver mail on Mondays, but for this hectic period we’ve inserted two extra Mondays for mail delivery, while we’re also emptying post boxes in the streets more often. And lastly we’re calling on everyone to send their holiday mail in time, preferably before 18 December – allowing us to make sure that all season’s greetings end up on their recipients’ doormats and in their letterboxes in good time.”
For many, the December holidays are a time of being together. At the same time, the festive season can be a challenging time for people experiencing loneliness, especially some older people. Receiving season’s greeting cards can help them feel less lonely. This year, too, PostNL is calling on everyone to join the Grote Kerstkaartenactie (‘Big Christmas Card Drive’) and send cards. This drive is an initiative of the Dutch National Foundation for the Elderly in close collaboration with the PostNL Special Moments Fund and Kidsweek. Together, they’re hoping to bring warm and happy moments to thousands of older people over the festive season.