USPS Announces New Holiday Stamps

The Postal Service has announced five new stamp releases for the holiday season.

• Our Lady of Guápulo. This Christmas stamp will feature a detail of “Our Lady of Guápulo,” painted in the 18th century by an unknown artist in Cuzco, Peru.

The image shows a crowned Virgin Mary, enrobed in a pyramidal gown speckled with jewels and holding a scepter woven with roses and leaves, looking down at a similarly adorned Christ Child in her left arm.

“Our Lady of Guápulo” is from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

• Winter Scenes. These stamps will celebrate the beauty and serenity of seasonal sights amid snowy landscapes.

Ten different photographs will be featured in a booklet of 20 stamps that showcase iconic scenes from the northern part of the United States.

• Holiday Delights. These four stamps are inspired by Scandinavian folk art with a modern graphic vibe.

The digital illustrations use a traditional palette of red, green and white to depict four holiday icons: a prancing reindeer with antlers, an ornament tied with a bow, a tree topped with a star and a stocking holding a teddy bear and a sprig of holly.

• Hanukkah. This new stamp will celebrate the joyous Jewish holiday with a colorful digital illumination that shows the lighting of the Hanukkah menorah on the last evening of the holiday.

All eight of the Hanukkah candles have been lit, and a child reaches up to replace the shamash, the helper candles used to light the others in the menorah.

• Kwanzaa. To honor the Pan-African holiday, this new stamp will feature the face of a woman in profile with her eyes closed sitting in front of a kinara (candleholder) with the seven lit candles (mishumaa saba). Her contemplative demeanor signifies the ways in which observers of Kwanzaa reflect on the holiday’s seven founding principles, the Nguzo Saba, and their role in everyday life.