Christmas shopping – done. Turkey – stuffed. Tree – decorated. As many of us clock off, shut up shop and wind down for the festive season, Reading’s Royal Mail team are working overtime to deliver a first class Christmas to the borough on the busiest day of the year.

It was 8am when I arrived at Whitley’s Royal Mail sorting office surprised to see a queue out the door at the enquiries office already – particularly as I had asked for directions three times convinced I had taken a wrong turn upon finding no noise, postmen or trademark vans in Gillette Way.

But manager Jason Scott washed away my scepticism upon leading me through a set of double-doors into a warehouse resembling Santa’s workshop bustling with busy workers and Christmas songs blaring though the speakers.

The 43-year-old from Burghfield said Royal Mail is expected to break last December’s record and handle more than 115 million parcels during the month – with the majority being processed today on the company’s busiest day of the year nationwide.

He said: “It’s particularly challenging seeing such huge volumes of packages and parcels around Christmas increase so significantly along with the number of letters and it can certainly make this time of year stressful.”

Peter Rickson, 54, of Emmer Green, has worked at the sorting office for 34 years and said the UK’s adoption of cultures and technologies from the States has resulted in a number of changes in his role over the last few years.

He said: “The parcels became a lot bigger and more frequent since the explosion of online companies like Amazon and eBay and we now also have Black Friday as well and 30 years ago we didn’t but I think we always cope really well with it.

“It was a lot of work and we had to move quickly but we’ve become very much used to Black Friday but the volume of packages will only get bigger as the day gets more hype over the years.”

As online shopping continues and people buy their Christmas gifts earlier Royal Mail have had to recruit an additional 19,000 seasonal workers across the UK to help sort the Christmas mailbag and larger shelves have been installed as postmen see more packages return to sorting offices undelivered.

Opening hours have also been extended throughout December to 7.30pm to meet growing demand and the Whitley sorting office is one of the few warehouses across the country blessed with the new state-of-the-art sorting machines – following in the footsteps of Oxford and Bath.

But as the growing pressure in the busy depot draws to a close on Thursday, Whitley’s sleeping children are dreaming of the arrival of old Saint Nick and his reindeer unaware that a fleet of jolly men in red have already delivered on their promises.