FAIRHOPE, Ala. — Last Wednesday morning, Kaye Shaw’s house in Fairhope was overflowing with the Christmas spirit — and Christmas cards.

Later that afternoon, it took two cars, three people and 16 boxes to cart the more than 13,000 cards to the post office, Shaw said.

Many were handmade by students with personal messages. And some arrived at the last minute before the Nov. 20 deadline in parcels from people in New York City and Ohio, who had read about her project to send 10,000 cards to soldiers in Iraq.

They were stacked on couches, balanced on the piano bench and lined up in neatly wrapped piles on two side tables in the dining room.

The long dining room table was the center of the assembly line, where Shaw and her two friends — her “elves,” she called them — Frances Turk and Paula Siegel, ran, yes ran, from card pile to card pile, adding cards to the stacks, and finally, a cover letter from Shaw.

“I need three more letters for that bunch,” Siegel said, rushing from the living room to the dining room.

“OK, I’ll take one from here and replace it over there,” Turk answered, in a code only an elf could understand.

When the stacks had reached the magic number of 40 cards, the packages were bundled together and added to the others wherever they could find a spot.

“At any one time there are 800 cards on this table,” Shaw said Wednesday morning. “That’s to make sure that no soldier in any adjacent barracks gets the same card.”

She and her elves were at the end of a marathon of activity begun several days earlier to make the Nov. 21 deadline of getting the cards in the mail to ensure they made it to the soldiers by Christmas Day.

“We’ve had a lot of mail in the past few days,” Shaw said, as she ran back to the kitchen where the cards were first organized. After that process, they were moved to the dining room table.

“That’s the reason we’re in this crunch,” Siegel said. “People chose to come in at the last minute with their cards, which we’re glad they did.”

Less than a month ago, they had about 4,500 cards, Shaw said.

“It’s called crisis at the North Pole,” she said.

As “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” played on the stereo in the air above the frenzy of this massive Christmas card enterprise, an unexpected guest showed up to help out.

“It does look like the North Pole,” said “Santa John” Raida, walking in Shaw’s house Wednesday.

Raida portrays Santa professionally in various places, but also donates his time like he will at PetSmart in Daphne the weekend of Dec. 8 to raise funds for The Haven, Fairhope’s no-kill animal shelter.

But he was at Shaw’s house Wednesday on official duty, he said. He had heard about the project and was there, he said, to help carry a bagful of cards to Iraq on his Christmas Eve mission.

“Do you realize what these letters will mean to the soldiers over there?” Santa John said. “It just touches my heart watching what these good folks are doing. They’re almost bringing tears to Santa’s eyes.”

Santa John said that he takes a little “vacation” right before Christmas, and that’s what he was doing in Fairhope last week — and because he had heard about the card project.

“I call it a vacation,” he said. “It’s a time to rejuvenate my Christmas spirit. And that’s what seeing this (card project) does for me.”

Shaw’s trip to the post office Wednesday with more than 13,000 Christmas cards bound for soldiers in Iraq, was the end of a project that started on Dec. 26, 2006. That was the day she saw a soldier in a local store looking at Christmas cards that planted the idea.

“It’s been a yearlong process trying to figure out how to do it,” she said. “The school system really came through for us. I just never dreamed that we would make 10,000 our first time out.”

At a Veteran’s Day celebration at Fairhope Elementary School earlier this month, students presented more than 300 handmade cards to Shaw.

“Our sincere hope is that the cards bring each of you a smile and perhaps a tear,” Shaw wrote in a cover letter enclosed in every bundle of cards. “I know when I was going over the cards, I had to have a box of Kleenex on my dining room table as children can be so honest with their thoughts and fears. They worked so hard with their notes and artwork to let you know how proud of you they are. They want you to know you are loved and that they are concerned about your welfare.”

Shaw said one question people have been asking the past few weeks is whether she will do this project again.

“If we’re still here, we will do it again,” she said.

Shaw’s cover letter to the troops takes little personal credit for the hours she put into the project.

“By no means could I have done this by myself,” she wrote. “Thousands of children and adults spent their time and talents letting you know how they feel about your service to our country. These messages are straight from the heart of those who love and care about you.”

As Santa John left Shaw’s house that day, he paused and looked back at the bustle of activity. “Jingles Bells” was now playing on the stereo.

“Thank you for what you’re doing,” he said. “The Lord will bless you.”

From somewhere inside Shaw’s version of the North Pole, she called back.

“He already has.”