Free Republic

During the Christmas season, when Christmas displays and the public outcry against them get almost equal billing, the tiny postage stamp dares to push the envelope, so to speak. While some towns are battling over the use of red and green lights on city buildings, Nativity scenes in parks and what to call holiday evergreen trees, the tiny adhesive squares on billions of letters and packages this December will subtly remind postal workers and mail recipients about Christmas and other religious holidays. This year the Postal Service has issued more than 2.6 billion holiday stamps. The majority of them are...

While the U. S. Postal Service still issues a Christmas stamp, note the poster in many post offices advertising its seasonal stamps. At the top of the poster is an stamp featuring cookies. Then comes the Hanukkah stamp, only then the Christmas stamp, then the Kwanzaa and Eid (Moslem holiday) stamps. Here's the rub. All holidays are clearly labeled on the poster: Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Eid--except for the Christmas stamp. That one is labeled "Madonna and Child." They won't use the "C" word on the poster (though it is used on the stamp).

The annual brouhaha over whether it's Christmas or "the holidays" spilled over into the U.S. Postal Service this week, with the Internet and public conversation awash with horror that no new religiously themed stamp was printed for the 2005 season.... But patrons looking for a new religiously themed stamp this year are getting leftover Madonna printings from last year, touching off a wave of reports that the Postal Service was planning to discontinue religiously themed Christmas stamps. "It's absolutely not true," said Diana Svoboda, spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh district. Next year's printing will include a new Madonna and the price...

Today if you are purchasing Christmas stamps and want Christian religious Christmas stamps from the USPS, you will have to ask for them. Ask for the Madonna and Child stamps. Apparently the postal service is too embarrassed to hang any posters advertising them in the postal offices (at least in my area}. I would love to see a real uptick in Madonna and Child stamp sales this year because I read that the leftist postal powers that be are thinking of discontinuing this American tradition.

Dear Postal CustomerWith the holiday season upon us, I would like to take this opportunity to say "HAPPY HOLIDAYS" [snip]