The Bethlehem post mark is prized and sought after around the world according to Post Master Ada Zajkowski, but this year things are going to be a little different.
"We're asking customers to bring a food item we're going to donate to the Barrow County Food Bank this year," Zajkowski said; a food item in exchange for the red hand stamp picturing the three Wise Men that the customers apply themselves to their greeting card envelopes.
Postal clerk Kim Camp said this year the 13 postal workers in Bethlehem are going for a record number of post marks.
"We stamped 130,000 Christmas cards last year," Camp said. "We're hoping to do 200,000 this year."
Camp said people send boxes full of Christmas cards to get the famous Bethlehem post mark.
"A lot of times it'll be addressed to the post master," she said. "Please cancel my Christmas cards and we just open the boxes and cancel the cards."
Zajkowski remembered one year a bride to be sent in her wedding invitations in April so she could get the postmark for her Christmas wedding.
Christmas at the Bethlehem post office is a busy time where the term "all hands and the cook" definitely applies. Zajkowski said even the mail carriers get called in from their routes to handle the work.
"It gets crazy," she said. "We work right through lunch. It's something extra we do for the community, the community being the entire world; we put Bethlehem on the map."
Postal clerk Kim Camp at the cancellation machine
http://accesswdun.com/article/2008/11/215632