Santa's big night is exactly two weeks away, and that means his elves at the North Pole and the U.S. Postal Service are extremely busy.

U.S. Postal Service workers are putting in extra hours to make sure presents are under the tree before Christmas.

A Channel 5 news crew got to see behind the scenes of the McAllen postal office where all the Rio Grande Valley's mail gets sorted.

This holiday season, the Valley will send and receive hundreds of thousands of letters and presents to family and friends, and they will all go through McAllen.

McAllen Post Office Manager Brandon Batiste gave a tour and showed the news crew how packages are being moved to their destination.

He says just last night they processed nearly 50,000, that's double what they see other times of the year.

"Not during the holiday season, we can see about 25,000 a day, but we're seeing upwards of a 50 percent increase," Batiste said.

Dozens of machines are helping sort all the pieces of mail, but they all need a human's touch.

"They'll load the packages onto the feed table, barcode side up, which is then scanned by the cameras here," Batiste said.

While they're all hands on deck, Batiste says sending gifts early will help it get there on time, and he had one more tip to avoid delays.

"Handwriting is very important," Batiste said. "If the image is transferred over to our remote and holding center in Salt Lake, a human has to decipher it, and that could lead to some delays."

The postal services send by date is December 18.