Postmarks from 'Christmas' towns add festive touch to holidays

Christmas always is a special time of year for putting smiles on children's faces, creating heartfelt memories and keeping traditions alive. For some people across the country, Christmas is almost always on their mind. How can residents of Christmas, Florida, Noel, Missouri, North Pole, New York, and Santa Claus, Indiana, ever forget about the season? Nearly 100 American towns have names that inspire Christmas dreams. A review of USPS records shows there are post offices in communities that recall the Nativity as well as those named for secular symbols of the holiday season. There are eight post offices named Bethlehem, four named Nazareth, six named St Joseph, nine named St. Mary or St. Marys and four named Star. Add to that Faith (two), Hope (11) and Shepherd (three). Let's not forget places such as Starlight, Pennsylvania, Wiseman, Arkansas, and Joy, Illinois. The secular side of Christmas is noted in six places each named Garland and Evergreen, two each named Holly and Partridge, one named Antler, another named Antlers and finally a community simply named Santa (Idaho). The U.S. Postal Service invites customers to have their greeting cards mailed from any of the post offices with Christmas names. One popular option is a special North Pole postmark offered annually by the postmaster of Anchorage, Alaska. To have Christmas mail postmarked at any such post office, the postal service instructs people to affix postage stamps on sealed and addressed cards and place them in a larger envelope or box addressed to the appropriate community. The North Pole postmark can be obtained from Postmaster, 4141 Postmark Dr., Anchorage, Alaska, 99530-9998. A bit closer to home, the post office in Rudolph, Ohio, annually processes tens of thousands of pieces of mail from Dec. 1 through Christmas Eve by applying a special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer pictorial postmark. Send holiday mail for postmarking to Reindeer Station, Postmaster, 14018 Mermill Rd., Rudolph, Ohio, 43462-9998. Collecting any of the postmarks is fun, easy and inexpensive. To have any of the postmarks returned to you directly for your collection, address one to yourself in a request to the postmaster or include a self-address-stamped envelope franked with 70 cents in postage for return. The Christmas Philatelic Club maintains a list of the addresses for the holiday-named post offices on its website. Go to www.christmasphilatelicclub.org/christmas-postmarks-united-states. The USPS list is online at about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/christmas-post-office-names.pdf. Christmas postmarks nicely complement a collection of holiday stamps. The first U.S. Christmas stamp was issued nearly 60 years ago, in 1962. That definitive-sized stamp shows a traditional wreath adorned with a ribbon with two candles on the left. It is printed in green red. U.S. Christmas stamps have been issued every year since. This year's Christmas stamps include traditional and contemporary designs. The traditional stamp shows detail from an 18th-century Peruvian painting of Our Lady of Guapulo by an unknown artist in Cuzco, Peru. It is from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The stamp is one of several the USPS released for the end-of-the-year holiday season. One issue shows 10 winter scenes while another depicts brightly colored Christmas icons inspired by folk art traditions. The cheerful red, green and white designs include a prancing reindeer, an ornament tied with a bow, a tree topped with a star and a stocking holding a teddy bear and a holly sprig. For the record, other stamps mark Hanukkah, which began the evening of Dec. 10, and Kwanzaa, which is observed Dec. 26-Jan.1. All of the stamps are nondenominated and include the "forever" designation, paying the current 55-cent first-class letter rate. Contact Dennis Sadowski at sadowski.dennis@gmail.com.