LITTLE ROCK — Most businesses and postal customers are expected to finalize any visits to their local post offices early on Christmas Eve, Thursday, December 24, and New Year’s Eve, Thursday, December 31.

To help match the use of U.S. Postal Service resources to customer needs, many local post offices will be closed at noon on Christmas Eve, December 24, and New Year’s Eve throughout Little Rock. The Postal Service is committed to its customers by providing normal window service operations at alternate facilities. Local information will be provided at each Post Office of their hours of service on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve and the nearest location where retail service is available.

These notices posted at local Post Offices will provide public information for those procrastinators who wait until the very last minute to mail cards, letters and parcels to family and friends. The local signs posted at each Post Office will include the locations of the nearest post offices open for regular hours on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, as well as any accessible Automated Postal Centers (APCs) which provide customer service 24/7.

All collection points (the “blue collection boxes”) will have the last pickup at 12 noon on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, except for the lobby drops and collection boxes outside post offices that maintain normal hours on this date.

All Post Offices will return to normal hours of operations and delivery service on Saturday, December 26 and Saturday, January 2, 2010.

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Please Note: For broadcast quality video and audio, photo stills and other media resources, visit the USPS Newsroom at www.usps.com/news.

A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 150 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars. With 36,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, the Postal Service relies on the sale of postage, products and services to pay for operating expenses. Named the Most Trusted Government Agency five consecutive years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $68 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 26th in the 2008 Fortune 500.