The Post Office has been gearing up to deal with the peak festive period, with 20-30 casual bank staff taken on to handle the increasing amount of mail that requires sorting.

This is standard annual practice - last year in the five weeks leading up to Christmas the Post Office delivered an average of 92,000 parcels per week, and is expecting to deliver close to 100,000 each week this year.

Non-operational IoMPO staff get involved too, including the chief executive officer and board members.

And are people sending less Christmas cards these days?

The IoMPO said that whilst no statistics are kept for Christmas cards specifically (only letter volumes), between 2019 and 2020 local letter deliveries declined by 6.5%.

Last year approximately 335,000 letters each week were delivered, which, based on previous years’ experience, is expected to decline to under 300,000 this year.

However the volume of forward letters (those sent off island, to the UK or further afield) remained similar between the two years (with only a 2.7% decline).

Going further back, both local and forward letter deliveries have seen a consistent decline over the past seven years (between 2020 and 2013).

Among the most significant declines was between December 2014 and 2013, when forward letters declined by 29.5%.

And for local letters, the sharpest drop was between December 2015 and 2014, which saw a 12.90% decline in volumes.

By contrast, the number of parcels deliveries handled by the IoMPO has seen a consistent increase over all but one of the past seven years (between December 2015 and 2016, when there was a 4.8% decrease).

The largest jump was between December 2014 and 2015, with a 23.40% increase.

The IoMPO liaises with all of its delivery partners and retailers to gain projected volume in advance, which allows match resources as well as it can to the volumes.

The last posting date for sending letters, large letters and packets to the UK via first class mail (no delivery date guarantee) is December 20, the last posting date for Special Delivery and Parcelforce express24 to UK as well as local to local letters, large letters and packets is December 22.

The local to local Special Delivery deadline is December 23.

A full list for international destinations is at www.iompost.com/christmas.

Following Brexit, since January 1 this year it has been a legal requirement that all items containing goods being sent to destinations beyond the UK, including Channel Islands, must have a fully completed customs declaration detailing the contents of any mail, packets and parcels.