Design Crafters

Each holiday season, I bring my kids to the post office to help me pick out the Christmas stamps we’ll use to send out our family Christmas cards. They inevitably zero in on the secular stamps – reindeer, classic childrens’ toys, Christmas wreaths, Santa Claus – while I am the traditional one in the family and I love the Madonna and Child stamps that the United States Postal Service issues each year. In the end, I typically buy both stamp designs. That way everyone’s happy.

There is a bit of debate about which country first issued Christmas-themed postal stamps. Canada issued a stamp in 1898 that read “XMAS” superimposed over a world map, but Denmark contends that their “Christmas 1904” stamp was the first truly Christmas-themed stamp. Christmas-themed postal stamps have been used in the United States since 1962. The USPS began issuing the Madonna and Child stamps in 1966 for Americans to use to send their Christmas cards, but have occasionally replaced that design with other images (including one of George Washington praying), but ultimately the Post Office insists that the Madonna and Child stamps are replicas of great art, and not religious stamps.

One especially fun way to send out Christmas cards is to have them postmarked in cities and towns with names reflecting Christmas, including Santa Claus, Indiana; Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Silver Bell, Arizona; Christmas, Michigan; Christmas, Florida; Christmas Valley, Oregon; Snow, Oklahoma; and Nazareth, Michigan. Did you know that you can even have your Christmas cards postmarked from the North Pole (via the Fairbanks, Alaska, post office)? With a little planning, your family’s cards could be the hit of the season.