The United States Post Office at Coplay reports people are already getting into the holiday spirit, as evidenced by the amount of packages coming and going at the Chestnut Street facility.

Postal patrons are also buying the special holiday stamps in large numbers and then affixing them to greeting cards and other mail.

New this season is that Amazon is aboard.

"We have been selected by Amazon to deliver their parcels on all our routes on Sundays," Postmaster Alice Zaterick said. The borough based post office will deliver the Amazon packages throughout the borough and its routes in North Whitehall Township.

The task in delivering the holiday greeting cards and packages will be the job of the present crew of mail carriers and counter personnel in the post office.

As with other post offices across the country, the borough postmaster said, the peak will be the beginning of the third week in December as people over the weekend write out their greeting cards and add address labels to their gift parcels to arrive before Dec. 25.

Parcels going abroad or to military personnel should be sent this week in order to arrive on time.

While the use of email and social media, as well as the higher cost of purchasing greeting cards, has reduced United States Postal Service holiday business, the borough post office has noticed some are returning to the more traditional holiday greetings.

Some residents may recall a time decades ago when so much additional mail circulated during the holiday season that borough mail carriers delivered the mail twice daily to keep up with the volume.

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Borough public works crews will continue to pick up leaves from residences Fridays, ending the practice on Dec. 12.