Celebrating the holidays is a joyous event. Family, friends, food and gifts. Yet inevitably, returning gifts has become part of the routine during the holidays. In fact, January 3 is the top shipping day for holiday returns at UPS. Just as others created Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we’re creating a day too that’s dedicated to returns – National Returns Day.

Let’s face it. Returning gifts can feel like a hassle … collecting gift receipts, driving around town, standing in line at the store. Holiday returns are daunting, but they don’t have to be.

With our Twitter party, #HolidayReturns, we hope to deliver a bit of sanity and some clever ideas to help take the hassle out of holiday returns. Joining us as the party moderator is blogger Melissa Dawn Lierman (@TimeOutMom) and a team of panelists. UPS compensated Melissa and the panelists for their participation. To generate smart ideas and tips throughout the day, we’re hosting two parties.

Party 1 takes place from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. ET. If you’re getting ready to hit the mall (or The UPS Store) with your gift returns, join Melissa and our panelists for tips to make gift returns less stressful.

Party 2 takes place from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. ET. We’ll chat about gift returns’ success stories and ideas to take the hassle out of gift returns throughout the year.

Along with great ideas, our #HolidayReturns parties will feature prizes. To participate in the chat and prize giveaways, include the party hashtag #HolidayReturns in your tweets. Along with three $25 gift cards to The UPS Store awarded every 15 minutes, we’ll give away a $100 gift card to Zappos – who just happens to have a great returns policy – at the end of each party. Read more for complete rules on the prize drawings for the parties: afternoon party rules, evening party rules.