No religious themed stamp this year

In case you hadn't noticed, there's no Madonna and Child Christmas stamp this year. Shown to the left is next year's - not this year's.

According to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette (Pittsburgh,PA), "[postal] 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."

Since 1966, the Postal Service has issued a Christmas stamp that includes the Madonna and Christ child, listed as "traditional" stamps, using classic works of art.

Diana Svoboda, spokesperson for the USPS Pittsburgh district is quoted in the article as saying, "It's absolutely not true."

"We had an overabundance of religiously based stamps from last year."

That along with an impending rate hike helped the Postal Service to decide not to print a new design for 2005 says the Post Gazette article.

The article went on to say that the rumor circulating on the Internet that the Post Office was planning to discontinue religiously themed Christmas stamps came as "startling news" to Mark Saunders, a postal service spokesman in Washington.

Saunders said he had just put out a news release that announced the design for next year's Madonna stamp which is based on a painting by 18th-century Peruvian artist Ignacio Chacon. The stamp is scheduled for release in October 2006.

To read the entire article, click here.