The Mail Box Store

Just a friendly reminder:

All 4 of our The Mail Box Store centers will be closed tomorrow, Saturday, January 6th for our Annual Planning Conference and Staff Developmental Training.

We will be open again on Monday, January 8th to help you with all your packing and shipping needs.

Happy ’24!
To help you ring in the new year, we are helping you save money while you get your files printed. All month long, we are offering 240 black and white copies for $24.
If you need to bring a bit more color to 2024, our color prints are $0.24 each (limit of 100).

Just a friendly reminder:
The Mail Box Store in Clovis is closed today and tomorrow for our Annual Planning Conference and Staff Developmental Training.
We will be open again on Monday, January 8th to help you with all your packing and shipping needs.

Get more bang for your buck on Double Punch Wednesday!
You get two punches on our loyalty reward cards for every greeting card or shipment purchase you make at The Mail Box Store each Wednesday (excluding USPS).

Happy New Year!

Have you made any New Years Resolutions? Here at The Mail Box Store we have made a resolution to continue providing excellent customer service as your local trusted source for packing, shipping and printing.

We hope that the ornaments on your Christmas tree were glimmering beautifully in the Christmas sun today, sparking over beautifully wrapped presents.

Merry Christmas from all of us at The Mail Box Store to your and your family and loved ones.

Some of us may have an overly large or heavy ornament that usually has a special place near the bottom of the tree, were it’s size or weight causes the least amount of problems.

The largest Christmas bauble ornament is over 15ft in diameter and was made by The Dubai Mall in the United Arab Emirates on December 19th, 2018 and weighed 2,425lbs!

What’s the largest or heaviest ornament you have?

Heralded as the world’s tallest Christmas tree in 2021, the ‘Christ Tree’ in Enid, Oklahoma stood at 140ft tall, 75% taller than the iconic Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.

This massive Christmas tree was decorated with 20,000 multi-colored LED lights and 10,000 ornaments.

What’s the largest Christmas tree you’ve ever seen in person?

Can you ever have TOO many ornaments though? Apparently, so.

When decorating your Christmas tree, it is important to not have ornaments spaced out too greatly as well as not having too many ornaments clumped together.

It is recommended to use 10-15 standard sized ornaments per foot on trees under 9 feet tall. Ornament lovers can put more baubles on their tree if it’s over 9 feet tall though, with a recommended 12-20 ornaments for each foot tall your tree is.

How much have you spent on a single Christmas ornament?

One of the world’s most expensive ornament is worth over $130,000, as valued by The National Associate of Jewelers!This high-end bauble was made by a British jeweler in 2009 and features a globe that is made up of gold and more that 1500 diamonds and has two orbiting halo rings encasing it, each of which feature 188 rubies!

Oh no! There just isn't enough time left!
Unfortunately, packages shipped today wont arrive in time for Christmas.
We can still help you get your package to it's destination as soon as possible after Christmas day. Come in and let one of our associates help with all your shipping and packing needs.

In 2021, A Welse woman named Sylvia Pope, also known as ‘Nana Baubles’, claimed the World Record for owning the larges Christmas Ornament collection at over 1800 individual pieces and counting.

Some of her favorites include a lobster, a hamburger, Big Ben and some Disney Characters.

What are some of your favorite ornaments from your collection?

Some families have specific holiday traditions involving ornaments or the placement of ornaments.

Sometimes the head of the household or a grandparent oversees placing a specific ornament on the tree. Perhaps someone in the house in charge or placing the star on top of the tree. Maybe a specific family member is the one who hides the Christmas pickle on the tree each year.

Does your family have any traditions that revolve around hanging ornaments on the tree?

Decorating trees with Christmas ornaments has become so popular in recent years, that it has spread to different holidays.

People now decorate trees for holidays such as Easter and Halloween, purchasing ornaments that fit those holiday’s individual aesthetics. And while these aren’t nearly as popular as Christmas trees and the ornaments associated with them, these new holidays have added new holiday ornaments to the market.

Have you ever decorated a tree for a holiday other than Christmas?

Some people enjoy sticking to a theme while decorating their Christmas tree. These themed trees rely on the decorator to hand select which ornaments to use to achieve their desired theme.

Some themes include: Beach Theme (sea shells, Palm trees and other summer themed ornaments), Movie themed (perhaps an Elvis themed tree, a Disney themed tree, or a tree made to look identical to the one from A Christmas Story), a videogame themed tree (decorated with ornaments featuring arcade machines, controllers, and characters like Mario or Pac-Man), or a rustic tree (using pinecones, wooden ornaments, and depictions of woodland animals).

What theme would you like to decorate a tree with?

Ornaments have come to represent the interests of individual families. While some families decorate a tree with ornaments selected purely for their aesthetic merit, many families’ Christmas trees are decorated with ornaments that hold important memories.

Some people collect ornaments throughout their travels as visual representations of their memories. Others purchase customized ornaments of birthdays, anniversaries, or other milestones. Some people still have ornaments on their tree that their now adult children made in arts and crafts class when they were still a young child.

What ornaments do you have on your tree that hold strong memories for you?

It's official, Christmas is here, and at our company, it's undoubtedly our busiest time of the year. But we're not complaining because we love spreading the holiday cheer. Today we treated our hard-working staff to a scrumptious lunch to show our gratitude for their dedication during this hectic season. We're lucky to have such a fantastic team that goes above and beyond to make sure our customers are happy.

Cotton batting was used in the manufacturing of mass-produced ornaments up to the 20th century. With this process, cotton would be wrapped around a form and then decorated with paint, paper, and more.

Some of these ornaments were crafted to hide a piece of candy, that can be accessed by either tearing the form apart or delicately finding the candy and removing if from it’s secret hiding space within.

Clovis Customers!
December 20th is the last day to ship a package to Western states!
Come into The Mail Box Store before then so we can help you get your gifts there on time!

Can you find the Christmas pickle?

In the late 20th century, Tim Merck wrote a story about hiding a pickle in the Christmas tree and letting the person who finds it open the first gift. He then made pickle ornaments to go with the story.

This very peculiar Christmas ornament was hidden on the Christmas tree, where it blended in with the green branches. Whichever child found the pickle first, got to open a the first present or in some cases even got an extra gift. The hunt continues even today, as children in many families still hunt for the Christmas pickle!

Clovis Customers!
December 19th is the last day to ship a package to Texas and states in the Mountain Time Zone!
Come into The Mail Box Store before then so we can help you get your gifts there on time!

In the song “The 12 Days of Christmas”, the 'true love' gives the gift of seven swans at the end of the first week. If you were a kid in the 80’s, you might have seen some of those swans decorating your Christmas tree, as swans were a popular ornament of the time.

In 1973, the Hallmark company introduced six glass ball ornaments and 12 yarn figures in its new small line of ‘Keepsake’ ornaments that gave Christmas ornaments collectible value. Since then, Hallmark has partnered with numerous companies to use their intellectual properties each year to make ornaments featuring popular items, characters, and more!

Clovis Customers!
December 18th is the last day to ship a package to the Midwest and Southeastern states!
Come into The Mail Box Store before then so we can help you get your gifts there on time!

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” aired as a TV special on CBS in 1965. In the first year alone, 4 million copies of this movie were sold in the US. Now the entire Peanuts gang is depicted on Christmas décor. The Peanuts song ‘Linus and Lucy’ has become an iconic, defining song of the Christmas season.

Just as iconic as the song, is Charlie Browns dismal Christmas tree. A sad looking evergreen branch nailed to a crisscrossed wooden stand, bowing under the weight of the single red ornament hung on it.

First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy established the White House Historical Association in 1961. Twenty years later, the Association launched an initiative to celebrate American History by offering unique annual Christmas ornaments to the public.

Since their introduction, the ornaments (which are designed by a new artist every year) have become a sought-after and beloved collector’s item for millions of families around the country, providing an opportunity for admirers of history and the elegance of the White House to share the traditions and stories of holidays past with future generations.

The space race between the US and the Soviet Union captivated the public. As a result of the popularity of outer space and a sci-fi aesthetic, many Christmas ornaments were made in shiny metal that looked very futuristic for the time. This was a massive trend that prolonged through the next decade or so.

Clovis customers!
December 15th is the last day to ship a package to East Coast and New England States, Florida and Hawaii!
Come into The Mail Box Store before then so we can help you get your gifts there on time!

By the end of World War II, most of Lauscha’s glasswork workshops and factories had turned into state-owned entities. The productions of baubles in Lauscha had ended; however, the fall of the Berlin Wall resulted in most of the firms being reestablished as private companies. Only about 20 small glass-blowing firms are active in Laucha today.

Clovis Customers!
December 14th is the last day to ship a package to the more developed, populated areas of Alaska!
Come into The Mail Box Store before then so we can help you get your gifts there on time!

The American-made mass-produced glass ornaments manufactured by Corning were met with a resounding success. And by 1940, they were making glass ornaments on a much larger scale than the manually produced German items. They made 300,000 ornaments a day!

When World War II broke out in 1939, it caused severe material shortages and forced Corning to halt silvering the glass ornaments on the inside (which was done to make the shine brightly for longer periods). To account for this change, they instead decorated the clear glass balls with simple thin stripes of pastel colors, which required less metallic oxide pigment.

But during this time, the conflict overseas resulted in replacing the sturdy metal cap on the top of ornaments produced during this time with a cardboard one to conserve metals for the war effort.

Clovis Customers!
December 13th is the last day to ship a package to the far reaches of Alaska in time for Christmas.
Come into The Mail Box Store before then so we can help you get your gifts there on time!

Before World War I, many ornaments purchased by Americans were imported from Germany. The War created a momentary backlash against anything German. Although it wasn’t long lasting and the production and purchasing of German-made glass ornaments resumed shortly after the war, the threat of a second war was felt by many.

Max Eckhardt, a US businessman associated with the glass ornament trade was worried about the negative impacts on his business caused by the negative public perception of German-made products if a second war against Germany were to happen and it made him start thinking of a way of producing glass ornaments right in the heart of America.

He knew that Corning, an American glass company, had machines that were used to make thousands of glass lightbulbs. In the late 1930’s, the deal was struck and Corning was able to use their machines to manufacture glass Christmas ornaments in America.

In the 20th century, Christmas began to grow even more popular among most Europeans and Americans. Germans still held a monopoly over the Christmas ornament market going into that century, but they started getting strong global competition over the years.

Since 1925, Japan challenged Germany’s dominance over the world market by producing ornaments on a huge scale. The brought in newer, more colorful designs that begun to cut into Germany’s market share. Later, the Czech Republic also entered the global market with an impressive amount of fancy ornaments. By 1935, more than 250 million Christmas tree ornaments were being imported to America.

In 1880, F.W. Woolworth stocked a few ornaments in his stores; he sold out in two days. By 1890, Woolworth was traveling to Lauscha each year to buy ornaments and was selling $25 million worth of them in his chain of stores.

When Woolworth began importing the glass ornaments (or baubles, as they were called) from overseas, he also included a selection of paper ornaments, painting tins, and fabric stockings.

Garland made of paper rings quickly became a low-cost way to add color and richness to a decorated tree. Dresdens, named after the German town where they originated, were commonly sold for just a few pennies and were made by placing card stock into a press mold.

How did these German glass blowers start making unique shapes for their glass ornaments rather than the standard spherical shape of the baubles?

Custom glass Christmas ornaments begin with the design of a carved wooden mold. A glass tube is attached to a blowpipe and heated until it softens and gives off a beautiful orange glow.

The glass artist inserts the molten glass inside the mold and blows into the pipe, forming the shape and imprinting the carved form into the glass. The ornament is removed from the tube with a pair of shears and is allowed to cool.
Once cooled, each ornament can be individually decorated with color by adding silver nitrate or other metallic compounds to the inside. Ornaments can also be painted and decorated on the outside with paints, pearls, gems, glitter and more! Some people even paint scenes onto glass ornaments on the inside of the glass, by inserting a small brush through the small opening at the top of an ornament!

Up until this point, all the Christmas tree baubles available in the market were German hand-cast lead and hand-blown glass. But by the 1880’s, saw many German entrepreneurs considering manufacturing baubles on a mass scale and selling them strictly as Christmas ornaments.

Glass firms around Lausch that had previously created marbles and bottles started creating glass ornaments using molds of children, saints, famous people, animals, and other forms. This new type of Christmas ornament was an instant success and was met with huge demand. Soon, almost every family in the area became involved in some way or another in the glass Christmas ornament industry.

As the tradition of Christmas trees and ornaments became more widespread, each country added it’s on ingenuity to the decorations. Americans would string long strands of cranberries and popcorn to encircle their trees. In the UK, crafty people make ornaments out of lace, paper, and other products showcasing the skill, ingenuity and imaginations of the makers. Small newspaper cut-outs or magazine illustrations also started to be hung on trees.

Some people would hang small gifts on the tree rather than placing them on the floor beneath it. In fact, so many decorative ornaments began to be used during this period that with each passing year it became increasingly difficult to actually see the tree beneath all the ornaments!

Did you know that the Queen of England saved the tradition of Christmas ornaments?

Queen Victoria was said to be quite taken with the tradition of baubles and brought them from Germany to England in the mid to late 1800s.

The popular monarch couple, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were the focus of the public eye. They were sketched just before Christmas in 1859 by an artist for the Illustrated London News. A lavish Christmas tree was displayed behind the royal couple, glowing with light and glistening with the sparkle of refined ornaments. This depiction of the Christmas tree became all the rage, on both sides of ‘the pond’.

We have passed Black Friday and Cyber Monday and are officially in the busiest time of year for deliveries and shipping. Our carriers handle MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of packages during the holiday season.

Sometimes, during this busy time, packages can get lost or damaged by the carrier. We offer declared value coverage at The Mail Box Store so you can have some peace of mind having your package covered. If you pay to ship your package with us, we can also handle the claims process with the carriers on your behalf.