For postal customers, the week before Christmas brings an ancient battle: thrift versus procrastination.

Starting today, procrastination is officially getting spendy.

Monday is the U.S. Post Office’s recommended Christmas deadline for all Priority Mail packages, the kind that cost $5 to $14 in flat-rate boxes.

Priority Mail packages and First Class envelopes mailed Tuesday are still expected to reach most addresses in the lower 48 states by Thursday, but it’s not guaranteed.

For those who don’t want to gamble with their packages, Wednesday is the deadline for domestic Express Mail, except to Alaska and Hawaii.

Those airmail letters and packages start at $17.50 and go up by weight.

All of Clark County’s post offices will close at noon on Thursday, according to usps.whitepages.com, though private businesses that offer USPS service may stay open. Mailboxes will be emptied by noon, too.

So how’s the shipping business this year? Reports around Clark County differed.

“This is the most chaotic I’ve ever seen it,” said Scott McHale, a 31-year veteran mail carrier at Vancouver’s downtown post office, as he swung packages into the back of his truck Monday.

To McHale’s supervisor Satinder Signh, it didn’t seem more than a “usual Christmas.”

“Last year, we were not that busy, but this year I think business is catching up,” Signh said. “Maybe the economy’s improving.”

Signh said the Post Office might also be getting more business as people try to save money on shipping.

But Sarah Akey, a clerk at FedEx in Hazel Dell, said her office has been unusually busy, too.

“It seems like it’s more than average this year,” she said.

Michael Andersen: 360-735-4508 or michael.andersen@columbian.com. Photographer Zachary Kaufman contributed reporting.

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