The signs are all around us.

Cars roll along the highway carrying home trees tied to their roofs, like seasonal trophies from some holiday hunting trip.

Festive lights begin to sprout on houses around the island, decorations and festive figurines gather in yards or wave from warmly lighted windows.

The days are chilly and the nights are downright frosty, and somewhere on your radio is at least one station that’s already playing nothing but holiday tunes 24/7.

Everywhere you look, it really is, as they say, beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

And even as holiday haters again bemoan the seemingly endless expansion of the Yuletide season (we have, after all, been seeing decorations in stores since Halloween) the madcap Christmas rush started even earlier this year at the Bainbridge Island Post Office.

It always does.

“The holiday mailing actually began weeks ago with a huge increase in the catalog and circular mailings,” Bainbridge Island Station Manager Larry Dekker said earlier this week. “The parcels have steadily increased over the last four weeks and are expected to greatly increase immediately after Thanksgiving and continue through to Christmas.”

Everyone knows if you want your gift to get to Grandma on time, you need to mail it early. And holiday shipping deadlines are posted readily around the post office, and have been for weeks, as a friendly reminder. But few people really understand the true extent that the Christmas season has on the actual volume of mail in transit, and on the people who sort, handle and deliver it as well.

“I know that when I came to work for the USPS back in 1997 as a city carrier, I was amazed at what went into getting the mail to the customer,” Dekker said. “We have 18 full-time regulars, 10 part-time carriers and

four part-time clerks [but] during this time of year, all the part-time employees will be working virtually full time.”

Days start early and the hours run long at the post office at Christmas time.

“Typically, the office runs about 1,200 or so parcels daily,” Dekker said. “And we expect that to increase to as much as 3,000-plus per day.

“During the normal part of the year, we receive three trucks of mail each morning beginning at 5:30 a.m. [with] the last [here] by 7 a.m.,” he explained.

“During the peak season, we will increase that to four trucks daily, beginning at 12:30 a.m., with the last one coming over on the 5:30 a.m. ferry.”

The biggest change during his tenure with the post office, Dekker said, has been the increased availability of expedited shipping by online retailers, especially Amazon. The Seattle-based giant was, he said, a postal game changer.

“These available options, as well as the directs from Amazon as well as other shippers dropping off mail for delivery through the USPS has greatly increased our parcel delivery,” he said. “Our employees are up to the challenge and are working to make this a great holiday season for our customers.”

The folks in the trenches, those who unload and sort the packages and mail, said that they look forward to the end of the year with a mix of anxiety and anticipation, like an athlete before a big game.

“I like something that requires a lot of hard work, and this requires a lot of hard work,” said postal worker Brittney Petito.

“I think a lot of people downplay the post office and what we do exactly for the United States. When, little do they know, we pretty much deliver everything. Not only do we delivery Amazon [orders] and our own stuff through the post office, but we deliver some FedEx [and] we deliver some UPS,” she said. “A lot of people go through the post office and not a lot of [customers] know that.”

Not only do the holidays start early around here, postal worker Stacey Atkins said, they go late, too. Like all the way to mid-January, she said, to support the inevitable gift returns.

But the chaos, she added, is part of the fun.

“I like solving the mystery of, ‘Where’s my parcel?’” Atkins laughed.

As with other highly stressful jobs which keep coworkers in close quarters, many at the post office said they enjoy most the camaraderie of the station.

“You kind of get really close with the people that you work with,” Petito said. “We all butt heads at some point so then we hate each other for a couple of days. But in the long run we’re family.”

“Everybody works well together,” agreed Asora Tagoai, who commutes from Bremerton to work at the island station. “It’s pretty cool working here.”

The people, both the customers and the coworkers, do indeed make the frantic schedule worthwhile, Dekker said. Everybody at the station knows that their hard work may very well make the difference for somebody’s holiday.

“When I started as a letter carrier, I volunteered to work on Christmas Day,” he said. “It was the best day to work. All day long, I felt like Santa Claus. During this time of year, almost every day can feel that same way.”