Bethlehem postmaster takes it one letter at a time during holidays

BETHLEHEM, N.H. – The packages, neatly addressed with postage from around the world, arrive daily at the post office here, containing stacks upon stacks of Christmas cards their writers want to have stamped with special holiday cachet before joining millions of other greetings in the mail stream.

“Texas, Alabama, France,” Postmaster Brian Thompson ticks off as the locations where packets have arrived from in the little post office on Main Street. “We cancel everything that comes through here.”

With its Christmas connotation, Bethlehem is destination each year for more than 50,000 cards and letters that require a simple stamp on the envelopes, a hand drawn vignette of mountains, evergreens and a village where smoke curls toward a sky punctuated by a bright star beaming down on the scene.

The Bethlehem cachet is a Christmas tradition in the town, introduced in the late 1950s or early 1960s by then-postmistress Margaret Hildreth. Thompson, who has been researching the history of the cachet so that it can be trademarked, says a Mrs. Hudson may have been the artist, but he still hasn’t found a definitive history of the stamp.

The scene is contained on a rubber stamp. In the lobby of the post office, a couple of them sit on a table alongside a stamp pad of green ink and during the busy times, there is a rhythmic thumping, as locals and visitors alike stamp their holiday mail.

It’s a sound heard from Thanksgiving to New Year’s each year. So far, Thompson said, he’s processed more than 28,000 pieces of mail, which puts things on track for the typical season’s end tally of 50,000 to 56,000 in that short window of time.

“After nearly 60 years, this has become a bit of a tradition and we’ll hear from people who’ll say (stamping) is a third generation thing,” he said. “We’ll hear from people who say this is something they have always wanted to do.”

Like other towns and cities around the country that bear a Christmas-themed moniker, the Bethlehem post office cheerfully responds to those requests for the Bethlehem cancellation and the cachet for whatever the reason.

The appeal of the cachet, Thompson said, may be in the simplistic design of a scene that is symbolic of a white Christmas and a small mountain town and the personal touch.

“This isn’t applied by machine,” he said. “I think there are people who appreciate that someone has taken time to stamp (their mail) by hand.”

While stamping tens of thousands of envelopes and packages may seem monotonous, Thompson gets satisfaction from carrying on a tradition. Sure, by the end of the month, his hand is sore and there’s a callous on his palm from connecting with the handle of the rubber stamp, but it’s all worth it.

“You have to have the spirit,” he said. “If you don’t, it’s too much like work. I think it’s important to pass this on and I was happy to take it over from (retired postmistress) Theresa (Jellison).”