I am a bit behind on sending out my Christmas cards this year. I wrote them up last night and went to the post office this morning to pick up some holiday stamps and send them off.
As I was waiting in line to purchase some stamps, there was a display showing all of the different holiday stamps that were available. There were stamps for Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Ramadan, with many different designs and colors. I liked the blue ones.
When it’s my turn, I go up to the counter. “I’d like to buy some stamps.”
“Holiday stamps or non-holiday?” the mail lady asks.
“Holiday.”
So she pulls out the two designs for Christmas: some goofy cartoonish designs and a Virgin Mary with Jesus. I liked the Virgin Mary ones but I didn’t want to get them because I used those last year. They also would have grossly overemphasized the Catholic theme I had going with my Christmas cards, which are adorned with a picture of St. Peter’s Basilica. That building is a lovely work of architecture, hence why I picked them out.
“Do you have those dark blue ones that are on display back there,” I inquired.
“The Eid ones?” She glances around. “Do you know those are for Ramadan?” The mail lady whispered the last word with a worried look in her eyes as if she were about to be clobbered.
I immediately think, “They’re for Ramadan? Cool!”
“Yes,” I reply.
Another mail lady in the station next to ours leaned over and said, “You sure you didn’t want Hanukkah stamps?” I gave her a funny look.
My mail lady eventually returns with the Eid ul-Fitr* stamps — she had to hunt for them — and rings them up. “That will be $7.40.”
I pay, grab my festive blue stamps, and go to mail off my Christmas cards.
So, now for the burning question. Why would I want to use Ramadan stamps on an ambiguously Catholic Christmas card? In truth, I only picked them out because they were pretty. Simple, simple.
However, I certainly don’t mind the after-effect these cards will portray: no matter what you are celebrating, we all are celebrating, so why don’t we rejoice together? “Merry Christmas,” “Happy Hanukkah,” and “Happy Holidays” all mean the same thing to me: “I wish you well.”
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* that’s the Islamic holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, by the by.