Posted on 12/08/2004 12:21:57 AM PST by torqemada
Saturday after Thanksgiving is the traditional day to purchase stamps for my annual Christmas card mailing... [snip] So, shortly before noon on that most recent post-turkey day, I sauntered into a neighborhood "U.S. Postal Store," [snip] and headed for the stamps-only section. I quickly found a packed wall of display racks offering a panoply of first-class postage devoted to the various elements of the year-end holiday season, specifically:
1) Christmas, featuring colorful, contemporary designs of Santa Claus with an array of inanimate, secular Yule symbols;
2) Kwanzaa, with not just one but two stamps promoting a totally fabricated "harvest holiday" for African-Americans, [snip]
3) Hanukkah, the ancient Jewish festival that marks the rededication of the temple wrested from the savage control of Syria's King Antiochus IV; and
4) Eid (Arabic for "festival"), a two-part, post-Ramadan feasting period for Muslims.
Beholding such philatelic diversity in a simple American post office truly is a multicultural moment that a few weeks earlier would have reduced John Kerry to tears of joy.
Something, however, was missing. "Where," I asked the attending postal clerk, "are the traditional Madonna & Child stamps?" (Postal authorities for years have issued both nonreligious and religious commemorative stamps for this holiday season, to satisfy equally those citizens who groove exclusively on office-partying and those who quaintly still revere the birth of Christ.)
"Those stamps," said the clerk with an odd, ecumenical smile, are here in this drawer, "under the counter." She slowly pulled open the discreet trove and withdrew samples of the Virgin Mary and her Baby Jesus for my fascination, as if they were products of an eccentric artist with copious red body hair who works at night, alone in the P.O. attic.....
Read the rest of the article at: http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=5906
(Excerpt) Read more at humaneventsonline.com ...
Great analysis!
Thanks, Cindy! Loads of info there. Bookmarked for later.
My mother used to say, "Did you have any words before you fell out?"
So hostile...
I cna see not knowing which stamps are available. when my wife got involved in major mailing projects I found out there were about 4 times as many different types of stamps than I had previously imagined. Turns out that at any given time there's close to 100 different stamp designs available just in the "main" denomination (ie currently 37 cents), I can easily see how someone wouldn't know about 1 particular type of stamp.
Not every day. If there is 1/4 inch of snow they don't come. If you live in a new house, they won't deliver to your door. The box must be placed at the curb. And yes, they're trying to do away with Saturday deliveries.
Like the issued every year Madonna and Child?
Not true in my post office. I asked for the Mary and Jesus Christmas stamps and the clerk took them from the stamp drawer right at the counter (without expressing any anti-Christian sentiment whatsoever, imagine!)
".....not in my little Pennsylvania community"
Yeah. It all depends on how one lives ones life. I don't pay attention to the stamps on inboud mail, generally when I buy stamps I get them from the grocery store where they don't have the variety the PO has, on the rare occasion they even ask which kind you want I answer "whatever". It wasn't until a few years ago when my wife became a "mail queen" (significant portions of the POs 3.1 billion in profit this year came from my pocket) that I even stepped into a post office more than once or twice a year. Many people in this country are concerned with what's inside the envelope and pay no attention at all to the outside or how it got there, really all I look at on the outside is the addresses and if it lacks a return address I might look at the cancelation to see if I can guess who sent it. People like me approach the mail system the same way we approach the electrical system, pay the bill flip the switch and ignore the rest.
Just like there's a red and a blue America, there is a red and a blue Christmas. The blue Christmas (IMHO) should be relabeled "Winter Marketing Festival" or words to that effect. There is no 'Christ' in blue Christmas. It's all about Santa and trees and materialism. The red Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, as it should be. And yes, we red-staters do some gift-giving too. But we do it with the understanding that 'Jesus is the reason for the season'.
P.S.: In Northampton, MA I noticed a Menorah on city property, no ACLU protesters that I know of. There is a Christmas tree nearby (which I consider to be blue Christmas). No nativity scene anywhere, surprise, surprise!
:)
It's fun going to the post office with her, it's like being a kid again, this whole world unfolds that I never knew about. She knows all the clerk in at least 3 post offices. Handy when I actually have to mail something wierd too, she's got the boxes and packing material and can guess how much it'll cost within about 50 cents.
Possibly. But I've had personal experiences at the Post Office close enough to it that I don't discount it. Our "civil servants" are union members and usually good Democrats. Hatred of Christianity seems to be the primary rallying force of Democrats these days.
I sell a little on ebay and started to get to know the clerks at the PO, too, BUT I recently discovered the nearest FedEx/Kinkos location and that's how I ship boxes now---including how I'll send my Christmas boxes that will go out hopefully Monday or Tuesday at the latest.
They don't sell stamps there, though. I asked and the clerk said she gets asked that all the time. I pointed out that even grocery stores sell stamps and it would be very handy if they at Kinkos sold them.
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