There were probably a lot of printed-out photos standing in for gifts under Christmas trees across the country. A combination of huge last-minute demand, retailers’ promises of Christmas delivery, and bad weather meant that many gifts that were supposed to arrive on the last business day before Christmas didn’t. Lots of people were disappointed. Joseph was one of them. Then…there was a modern miracle.

He had ordered a small gift for his wife (“A stocking stuffer, really,” he writes) on December 19th, and it was scheduled to arrive before Christmas thanks to his Amazon Prime membership. Only it didn’t. This wasn’t catastrophic for Joseph, but he was disappointed.

Here’s what he saw in the tracking data from FedEx:

Joseph told his wife that she could expect another gift later in the week, which is always fun. Who doesn’t like residual gifts? He certainly didn’t expect the doorbell to ring on Christmas Day…and find an apologetic FedEx driver on the porch with the delayed package!

“My wife and I are veterans of the hospitality industry and we absolutely appreciate the exceptional decision made by somebody with FedEx to do everything possible to keep us from being disappointed,” he wrote to Consumerist. “Our guess is that there are a few others out there who must be similarly impressed.” They can’t be the only ones who received a surprise gift that they thought had been delayed until after the holiday.

Well done, FedEx, and thank you to all of those drivers who worked on the holiday to get packages into their customers’ hands.

Update: Reader Alex tells us that it’s not just Fedex that sent drivers out to play Santa: the U.S. Postal service also asked for volunteers to deliver delayed packages. “My Dad is a mail carrier for the USPS and this year they asked for volunteers to deliver packages to customers on Christmas Day,” Alex writes. “He and many other volunteered and worked 11 hours yesterday.” Thank you, awesome postal carriers!

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