The inflow of Christmas cards is pretty evenly dispersed over the earlier days of the season, but the great rush comes on the night of the 23rd and the morning of the 24th of the month. Letters up to four ounces in weight are now conveyed at the small cost to the public of a penny. So far as this city is concerned, letters and book-packets over two ounces in weight, which are now blended in one post, are quadrupled in number at the Christmas season. This increase in the letter packets has the effect of retarding the postmen in effecting their deliveries, inasmuch as they have to search in their bags for the packages which they cannot carry tied up in consecutive order. The trouble arising therefrom is somewhat mitigated, however, by the circumstance that the charged letters are less numerous than heretofore, owing to the large increase in the weight which is now carried for a penny. The Christmas season is departmentally regarded as consisting of the days from the 20th of the month to Christmas Day, the 25th, inclusive. From the most reliable calculations that the officials are capable of making, it would appear that during the Christmas period no fewer than 2,000,000 letters are dropped by the residents into the 500 receptacles dotted here and there over Bristol's large postal area. The letters distributed by Bristol's regular postmen, with their 250 followers, are a million and a half, in each case about an extra week's work to be got through in three days. 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.