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This is a story about the little town of Bethlehem. Maryland.
A rural hamlet on the Eastern Shore, it lures people by the hundreds for an annual Christmastime pilgrimage.
Women and men, young and old, come to the town of 150 to mail their Christmas cards – more than 50,000 this December, the postmaster guesses. Senders hand-stamp each of their cards with a red-ink image featuring the three wise men riding on the backs of camels.
They send the cards from the heart of town, a few feet from the lighted star that rises this time of year over the main two-lane road, where the itsy-bitsy post office stands. Each card gets the postmark “Bethlehem MD 21609.”
“It’s just more Christmas-y to get your stamp on the cards,” said Diane Charwick, 55, who drove an hour with her husband from their home in Salisbury, Md.
Bethlehem – or “Beth-lem,” as the locals say it – is an unincorporated town with just a few dozen houses, a tractor shop, an auto repair shop, a church and a convenience store that shares a barnlike building with the two-room post office.
June Wagner, 64, a Bethlehem native, worked at the post office for 30 years before retiring as postmaster in 2001. She returns every December to volunteer in the lobby, where she helps visitors stamp their cards and hums along to the holiday tunes.
One recent afternoon, Wagner pulled out her scrapbook to tell of the origin of Bethlehem’s biblical postmark. It began, she says, as a Depression-era fundraiser, when in 1938, a 16-year-old high school student wanted to put her scarcely known hometown on the map. Marjorie Ann Chambers, the local newspaper publisher’s daughter, heard that such towns as Santa Claus, Idaho, were “cashing in” on their names each holiday season, but Bethlehem was being “left in the cold,” according to a wrinkled newspaper clipping.
Soon, people flocked to Bethlehem, which is about 75 miles from Washington, in search of a special touch on their Christmas cards, and a tradition was born.
The U.S. Postal Service says about 100 towns have similar special holiday postmarks: Antler, N.D.; Nazareth, Texas; Snowflake, Ariz.; and Wiseman, Ark., to name a few. There are five other Bethlehems, too, including Bethlehem, Ind.
The small southern Indiana town sees the bulk of its business during the holiday season, Bethlehem Postmaster John Cable said. Cable said he expects to see between 25,000 and 30,000 pieces of mail come through the small office, open just 8 a.m. to noon six days a week. The holiday stamp features the three wise men and the star of Bethlehem, and has been the same since the 1950s, Cable said.
Another little town with a big holiday name is Santa Claus, Ind., less than two hours from Bethlehem.
Santa Claus Postmaster Marian Balbach said this year’s rush will put the little post office close to 500,000 envelopes, just for the holiday season.
This year’s Santa Claus stamp features the man in red himself, designed by a local high school art class student last year. Customers come from Tennessee, Kentucky and even Missouri to have their cards featured with this 2 inch-by-4 inch stamp, the only post mark to bear the name “Santa Claus.”
Bethlehem, Md., Postmaster Karen Durham said she has seen her share of interesting people stream through the lobby every Christmas.
“There’s one gentleman who comes in here who says his mother dragged him here as an infant and has been coming every year,” she said. “He reminds me every year!”
“Then there are people who send cards and their people don’t even notice, and they get really annoyed. People just don’t read. So this one lady made stickers that she put on the back of her envelopes saying, ‘I mailed this from Bethlehem.’ ”
And then there’s the UPS lady, who stopped by last week.
That’s right: Even the United Parcel Service distribution center on the Eastern Shore gets its company holiday cards postmarked at the U.S. post office in Bethlehem.
Allie Townsend of The Journal Gazette contributed to this story.
The postmaster of Bethlehem, Ind., expects to see between 25,000 and 30,000 pieces of mail during the holiday season.
