Some 20,000 letters and parcels find their way to the Bristol Returned Letter Office as the flotsam and jetsam of the Christmas postings. They consist of letters without addresses, letters addressed in undecipherable caligraphy, letters for people dead, gone away, and not known; parcels of poultry and game without name of sender or addressee. Certainly handwriting does not improve, hence all these failures and embarrassments to the Post Office.
The articles for transmission by parcel post handed in at the head Post Office, branch, offices, sub-offices in town, suburbs, and villages, reach the total of 40,000, being about four times as numerous as at ordinary periods. The rural districts alone produce 8,000 parcels. The parcels delivered number 35,000, being treble ordinary numbers. Ten thousand of these parcels are delivered in the villages. Nearly a thousand large hampers of parcels are exchanged between London and Bristol, and of these some forty contain foreign parcels alone.
Notwithstanding the vastly increased numbers, it becomes noticeable at Bristol, year by year, that there is a diminution of parcels conveyed by parcel post containing articles of good cheer: the geese, the fowls, and the game having decreased, plum pudding's, however, being as much in evidence as ever. The reduction in the parcel post rates which took place in 1897 has had a very marked effect upon the parcel post traffic, and the increase, particularly in the heavy weights, has been very great. On the other hand, the reduction in the rates of charge for the conveyance of post parcels
has had the effect of bringing about a decrease in the number of parcels weighing under 2 lb.
As showing that the postal deliveries at the Christmas season are arranged as well as the extraordinary circumstances will admit, and that the public on its part can appreciate the difficulties to be contended with, it may be worthy of mention that complaints of delay are rarely made.
The Postmaster-General is not unmindful of his duty in providing sustenance for his legions at the busy season, and refreshments are supplied for the permanent staff without stint. There are no trams running on Christmas Day, so that the postmen with their heavy loads are much worse off than on ordinary days, when, with lighter loads, they can ride to and fro on the tramcars. There are some pleasing social features which are worthy of record. For instance, the ladies of the Clifton Letter Mission have for some years past sent "A Christmas Letter" and Christmas card to each of the 150 telegraph messengers employed in the Bristol district. The ladies who manage the society known as the Postal and Telegraph Christian Association invariably send to every postman in the Bristol district a sympathetic
and seasonable letter, accompanied by a pretty Christmas card and the best of all good wishes. The staff of the Bristol Post Office usually pay the compliments of the Christmas season to their postal friends elsewhere in the form of a prettily-designed card.
Christmas Day of 1898 is rendered memorable in postal annals from the circumstance that on that day the postage on letters to and from many of our colonies and foreign possessions was reduced from the modest sum of 2½d. per half-ounce to the still more modest sum of 1d. per half-ounce. Bristol has a not inconsiderable colonial and foreign correspondence. British India takes 550 letters, etc., on the average weekly; the Dominion of Canada, 450; Newfoundland, 110; and Gibraltar, 100; the other countries to which the reduced rate of postage has been applied take 500 in the week.
One of the many changes that have taken place in the manners and customs of the people as affecting the Post Office is very noticeable as regards the observance of St. Valentine's Day. Thirty years ago the votaries of the patron saint, in their thousands, vied with each other, year after