Christmas is almost with us. The kids are on winter break, the smell of oliebollen is filling the air, and the streets are clogged with delivery trucks.

You’re bound to encounter frazzled PostNL, Amazon, FedEx, and other delivery workers everywhere you go. On a recent Saturday afternoon, I came across a DHL driver blasting his horn at a DPD truck whose driver was screaming at a third driver with a van that was blocking a narrow street.

It’s hard not to sympathise with delivery workers. They’ve got one of the most exasperating and dangerous jobs in the country, especially once the countdown to Christmas begins. One frenzied Amazon worker pounded on our front window a few nights ago, desperate to find someone willing to take a package for a neighbour who was out for the evening.

But it can be even worse if you are expecting Christmas packages from relatives who live in other countries.

Complications ranging from Brexit to a lack of personnel at companies like PostNL have turned the cherished annual tradition of exchanging holiday gifts into a logistical nightmare for both those expecting packages and those tasked with delivering them.

Gifts for and from family members living in other countries need to go in the mail by the third week of November to ensure they’ll actually arrive by Christmas.

This year, my desktop computer has turned into a command centre worthy of the air traffic control tower at Schiphol. I’ve got around a dozen tabs open to track packages coming to and from our house.

It’s always amazing to follow the paths of the ones heading over here from stateside relatives. Each one goes on a whirlwind journey from states including California, Texas, and New York before finally getting transported to the Netherlands.

A package my sister sent last month ran afoul of customs agents during a stop in a UPS warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky of all places. They claimed an astronomical €82 in customs fees were due. They obviously made a mistake. The presents themselves probably aren’t even worth €82.

My sister opted to pay the fee. The current plan is to raise hell with UPS once the box gets here and we crunch the numbers. Despite the tab being paid, the package has been stuck in what I’ll call ‘Christmas Present Limbo’ at a UPS facility in Hoofddorp since late November.

Efforts to figure out the latest hold-up have involved bickering with the company’s useless AI customer service chatbots and trying to track down emails that were never sent in the first place.

Supposedly the current delay involves ‘ingredients’ in one gift, suggesting that an overzealous customs agent ran amok with an updated EU product safety regulation that went into effect this month.

Did you know about this?!! Neither did we, but the regulation is causing tons of trouble for retailers, such as UK bookshops who were also caught off guard by it.

Meanwhile, another relative has figured out a way to sidestep a thousand potential customs headaches altogether by listing everything as ‘used’ and marking the values of each gift to practically nothing. I’m really looking forward to drinking the ‘used coffee’ from my favourite local roaster in Portland, Oregon.

Another cherished pastime  

And then there are the aggravations of deciding who’s going to answer the door when a delivery person rings the bell.

By the time the decision has been made, the delivery person has already dropped it off with the neighbours, which presents the further predicament of who will go fetch it.

Two gifts I’ve gotten my partner this year have already been spoiled when I made the mistake of going outto pick up a few groceries. They *both* arrived during the 20 minutes I was gone. One was an Etsy cat calendar from one of her favourite designers who cheerfully covered the box in adorable paw print and kitty stickers.

So much for that surprise on Christmas morning…

The good ol’ days?

 All this madness is enough to make someone pine for the old days when you could lose an entire Saturday to dashing from shop to shop in search of the perfect gifts only to finally say ‘screw it’ and give grandma a Garfield Christmas ornament and everybody else a Starbucks gift card.

Okay, maybe this brave new seasonal world of ours isn’t quite *that* bad. It also, blessedly, hasn’t managed to entirely kill off the brick and mortar sector for those who want to support local businesses.

I do my best to get out there and buy from them, especially bookstores like the American Book Centre. There are also several fantastic makersmarkts in the Netherlands this time of year for those with the time and energy to visit them.

And the policy of many delivery companies dumping packages with other people has continued to fuel another cherished Dutch tradition: snooping on the neighbours.

Last week, a package for the guy who lives a few doors down from us arrived in a battered box for a dog crate that was being held together by a weird assortment of various types of shipping tape.

But he is not a pet owner.

That’s one we’ll still be wondering about this time next year.

Have you been experiencing your own ‘holiday hell’ as you send and receive gifts this year? We’d love to hear about it for a future article. Send your tales of woe to editor@dutchnews.nl