Christmas Stamps

I understood that this year the Royal Mail were to produce specifically Christian stamps and I was therefore disappointed when the post office assistant affixed ordinary stamps to all my overseas mail - nothing at all festive about them! Some of my letters were a 'once a year' mailing just to keep in touch with friends I haven't seen for years, and it seemed a pity that they should miss out on the festive stamps. With the Post Office bursting at the seams with the long queues of people waiting for service, I just let them go. However, when it came to requesting a batch of stamps for my inland mail, I was asked 'Do you want Christmas stamps?' Fine, I thought, until I looked more closely and discovered that the stamps merely depicted an angel!

Now I see that Richard Hall on www.connexions.net has gone into the question of our 2007 Christmas stamps in great detail, uncovering strange things like the various angels depicted and their significance! Whoever wouuld have thought that this is a celebration of the tercentenary of the birth of Charles Wesley who wrote 'Hark the herald angels sing'!

Stranger still, it seems that we are supposed to ASK specifically for them if we want Christmas stamps and, even then, we will only get the stamps depicting angels! We have to be even more specific if we want either of the two stamps depicting the Madonna and Child! What I want to know is - How can we ask specifically for something that we don't know exists? In the rush to post before the last posting date, who is going to consult the Royal Mail's website?

If I have aroused your curiosity, please go to Richard's website www.connextions.net and feast yourself on the array of stamps available, with the explanations and names of the angels. Thank you, Richard!