Ministry of Magic x U.S. Dept of Yuletide Correspondence

I couldn't just send another Christmas postcard... I wanted to create a fully immersive holiday communication experience rooted in magical bureaucracy. Naturally.

The concept:
Our home was officially flagged for Excessive Holiday Magic Output, triggering a multi-agency partnership between the Ministry of Magic, the United States of America Christmas Postal Service, and its newly aligned sub-agency, the Department of Yuletide Correspondence (DYC).

This resulted in two coordinated creative pieces:

1. A printed postcard mailed to all recipients on our “Approved Festivity Recipients Registry.” (our address book)
    
2. And a social media notice announcing the Ministry’s request for updated address information (the CTA In my social media post).
    

Together, they formed a holiday narrative system blending whimsy, compliance, and clerical charm.

According to the Ministry’s Seasonal Monitoring Office, our home reached dangerously high levels of holiday magic and cheer — surpassing acceptable output thresholds for mere muggles. Under Distribution Rule 14-C: Mandatory Holiday Notification Protocol, the Ministry is required to redistribute this notice to everyone listed on our Approved Festivity Recipients Registry.

This is why friends and loved ones received the postcard: I didn’t simply send them a holiday card... they received an official holiday violation report because they are in our file.

A vintage, early-1900s government-issue aesthetic, blending:

• magical-world verbiage
• American postal typographic traditions
• age-worn printing styles
• clerical marks and rubber-stamp logic

The goal was to make the card feel excavated from a century-old magical administrative archive.

The front was designed as an official Ministry of Magic / Department of Yuletide Correspondence document printed on government-issue stock. It included workshop-style space for individualized ID numbers, a hand-stamped date, and Stodgy’s fresh-ink signature from the Ministry’s Senior Holiday Compliance Officer. Classification codes and cross-agency insignia reinforced the illusion of a multi-department holiday inquiry. The overall tone was intentionally formal, mildly alarmed, and bureaucratically festive... the kind of notice you’d expect a frazzled magical clerk to issue during peak season.

The back functioned as the official redistribution directive, formatted to explain the Excessive Holiday Magic Output ruling in proper procedural language. It outlined routing requirements and continued the vintage postal aesthetic established on the front. A final footnote grounded the piece even further in magical-administrative lore: “Enchanted version of this notice has been archived for future review, ref: DYC-12B-37203-FR.”

Distribution:
Each postcard was printed, hand-numbered, hand-stamped, hand-addressed, and routed through USPS to complete the illusion. The real magic came from recipients believing — even for a moment — that the document truly originated from a legitimate magical-government office.

Because the postcard opened the door to a full-fledged narrative world, the next step was a social media companion: a “heads-up notice” from the Ministry reminding recipients to verify their address in our Registry.

This came from:
The Ministry of Magic in cooperation with The Department of Yuletide Correspondence

To maintain compliance with holiday routing standards, the Ministry needed to ensure our contact database was current before future notices, directives, or seasonal outputs could be distributed.

So the Ministry issued an official reminder:

"All parties are reminded to review and update their APPROVED FESTIVITY RECIPIENTS REGISTRY in advance of seasonal dispatch operations. This task remains mandatory under Holiday Filing Protocol S 7-F. Failure to update may result in minor postal confusion and moderate owl frustration."

The tone carried mild urgency wrapped in polite bureaucratic warmth, with hints that the magical administration was operating slightly above its capacity. A tiny reference to underfunded owl coops or holiday delivery shortages added to the charm of an overwhelmed agency doing its best.

The digital heads-up was presented as an official interdepartmental memo, complete with a formal notice graphic and social-post copy written entirely in-universe. The CTA link appeared in the comments, per Ministry communication protocol, positioning the request as a gentle compliance reminder rather than a sales or marketing prompt.