Let’s celebrate this festive season with beautiful Christmas 2016 stamps, a miniature symbol of happiness, religious tradition, art, and culture.

Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus, celebrated on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world.

The name ‘Christmas’ comes from the Mass of Christ. A Mass service is where Christians remember that Jesus died for us and then came back to life.

Christmas is a time when family and friends come together and remember the good things they have.

People, and especially children, also like Christmas as it’s a time when you give and receive presents!

Popular modern customs of the Christmas celebration include gift giving, completing an Advent calendar, Christmas music, and caroling, lighting a Christingle, an exchange of Christmas cards and church services.

People also organizes a special meal, and display of various Christmas decorations, including Christmas trees, Christmas lights, nativity scenes, garlands, wreaths, mistletoe, and holly.

Christmas 2016 stamps – Canada

Canada Post’s Christmas 2016 Stamps ring in the holiday season with three mirthful images from one of Canada’s most prolific stamp designers and a classic Renaissance rendering of Mary and the baby Jesus.

Holiday well-wishers can add special cheer to their cards and letters with a secular or a sacred image.

Filled with billowy snowflakes in a navy blue sky, Rolf Harder’s images appear to be taken from an enchanted forest, occupied only by Santa Claus, a single Christmas tree and a dove carrying an olive branch.

The fourth stamp depicts the Virgin and Child, which was painted around 1460 by a highly esteemed painter from Florence, Italy, known only as the Master of the Castello Nativity.

This rare painting uses gold and tempera, a pigment common until the advent of oil paint, whose many layers create intense colours.

Virgin and Child is part of a generous donation of paintings made by Michal and Renata Hornstein to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Date of Issue: 1 November 2016
Country: Canada
Denominations: Permanent, $1.50, $2.50, Permanent

Source: Canada Stamps

Nativity Forever stamp – USA

USPS issued Nativity Forever stamp honouring one of the most symbolic images in the world – the Nativity Scene.

An image that for Christians from all walks of life celebrates the story of the Nativity – the birth of Jesus Christ.

The beautiful stamp includes a brilliant star that stands out in both its illustration and in its meaning of Christmas.

The stamp art features an image of the Holy Family silhouetted against a dawn sky.

As the baby Jesus lies in a straw-filled manger, Mary kneels to the right and Joseph stands to the left, holding a lantern.

Over the scene, a bright star shines on the trio. The colour palette features simple shades of blue and white highlighted by deep shadows.

The Nativity Scene
Artists through the centuries have celebrated the Nativity in painting and sculpture.

Carvings of Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus, often accompanied by an ox and a donkey, date back at least to the fourth century.

St. Francis of Assisi is credited with creating the first crèche in the 13th century.

Today Nativity scenes remain the centrepieces of many church and family devotions during the Christmas season.

Date of Issue: 3 November 2016
Country: USA
Denominations: Forever 47¢

Christmas 2016 stamps – Christmas Island

The stamp issue continues a theme enjoyed by many at Christmastime each year.

Santa and his Christmas Island friends deliver season’s greetings in their own unique style.

The designs show Santa making his annual visit to Christmas Island in the early hours of 25 December.

After the freezing temperatures of the North Pole, he’s feeling the heat on this tropical speck in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

But with the assistance of Rudolph and the trusty elves he refuses to be deterred from delivering Christmas cheer to Christmas Island’s eager inhabitants, including crabs, turtles, bosun birds, frigate birds and boobies.

They’ve been waiting for hours, scanning the big blue sky for the first glimpse of Santa’s sleigh.

As the red-clad Santa swoops across the steaming, dense forest he thinks that next year he might consider wearing something more suited to the island’s humid conditions.

Date of Issue: 31 October 2016
Country: Christmas Island (Australia)
Denominations: 65c, $1.80

Source: Australia Stamps

Christmas 2016 stamps – Australia

This year’s Christmas 2016 stamps depict three episodes from the familiar biblical story of the birth of Christ.

They show Mary tenderly cradling her newborn son; a trumpeting angel announcing the glad tidings of the birth; and the three wise men sent by King Herod to investigate the birth of the Saviour.

In the biblical Christmas story, the three wise men, or Magi, arrived in Jerusalem from the east, with news that the King of the Jews, or Messiah, had been born.

Alarmed, King Herod ordered the wise men to embark on a journey to find the child.

They followed a guiding star to Bethlehem, where they found the infant in a stable with Mary, his mother.

The wise men were overwhelmed with reverence and awe. They knelt before the baby Jesus, offering precious gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, before returning to their own countries.

The religious stamp designs have been created using the intricate art of hand paper-cut.

Two other stamps have been designed to reflect more secular celebration and the universal values of joy and goodwill.

Date of Issue: 31 October 2016
Country: Australia
Denominations: 65c x 3, $1.70, $2.55

Source: Australia Stamps

Christmas 2016 stamps – USA

The Christmas 2016 stamp features a detail of Madonna and Child, a 15th-century tempera-on-panel painting.

Clad with a white veil over her head and a red garment trimmed in gold and partially covered with a gold-trimmed blue cloak, a haloed Virgin Mary gazes downward and to the right, looking at a blond, haloed Christ Child while placing her right hand on his shoulder.

Behind both figures is a hedge of pink and white roses, with blue sky visible through their thorny, leafy stalks.

Dated to circa 1470, the painting is in the Widener Collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Date of Issue: 18 October 2016
Country: USA
Denominations: Forever 47¢

The post Beautiful Christmas 2016 stamps celebrating the religious tradition appeared first on Latest Stamp Collecting Updates and Philately News.