The Stamp Stories Newsletter - Issue #2

Hello Friends!

Welcome to the second issue of our newsletter. It’s snowing here today, so I am in the holiday spirit and bringing gifts! First I am happy to announce the survey results episode is out. Go check it out if you haven’t already. Second, I share a Christmas Stamp story that sheds some light on why it took so long to see religious holiday stamps in Canada.

Enjoy!

It’s finally out! We had such a great time pouring over the results from the survey we put out this past month. It was so eye-opening and informative.

Just think we now have answers to the following:

Over 50 questions were put to collectors and over 110 of you responded.

You can listen to it in your favourite podcast app by clicking on this link: http://stampstories.ca/listen

Don’t worry if you missed out on this survey. Due to popular demand, we are likely to do more surveys in the future, and certainly, we will do this once again to see what changes. If you have ideas for future questions or constructive feedback, we’re all ears!

P.S. This idea only took us 4 years to execute - so I am happy to finally have achieved it 🤪

When the snow falls I start to get into the holiday spirit. I have been spending a lot of time looking at my Christmas stamp collection and doing research. I thought I would share something I found out recently. This is from the Archives of Canada related to “the issue of a non-denominational religious postage stamp for Christmas”. The year is 1956 - and the issue was whether the country would put out religious-themed stamps. You can see from these pages, from the privy council, how the conversation went. At first, was the proposal:

As you can see it was decided to hold off due to concerns over the possible controversy and lack of qualified engravers to do a proper job. The status of religious stamps would remain in limbo for another 14 years.

The first Christmas stamp to show any religious symbol would be 4 stamps depicting Jesus, Nativity and a Church. They were issued in October 1970. As you can see, these were stamps drawn by children and were part of a contest held the year prior. Children across Canada answered the question “What Christmas means to me” and out of 50,000 submissions 12 were selected.

Another extra bonus of trivia - the 1970 series also had the first two Canadian stamps to depict Santa Claus.

Is there any wonder why it’s so popular with collectors? And we aren’t even talking about all the variations of these stamps that have been found. It truly is a favourite issue of many!

We hoped you enjoyed this issue! We welcome you to reply with your own stories and fascinating Canadian Stamps discoveries you’ve made in your own research. Maybe you’ll see them in the next issue!

Until we meet again - happy collecting!