Art: Calculated Blah

Christmas stamps, Christmas stamps,

Making our debut,

We’ll brighten up your Christmas cards

And speed them on to you.

On the Monday after Thanksgiving, this sticky doggerel to the tune of Jingle, Bells will introduce TV viewers to the nation’s first official Christmas stamp. The stamp is meant not only to encourage all Americans to spend 4;¢ in postage for their avalanche of Christmas cards (rather than the still permissible 3¢ for unsealed envelopes), but also “to supply a colorful fillip” to the greeting business. As usual, the bureaucrats did not consider that good and original design—or even the tiniest hint that Christmas is, after all, Christ’s birthday—might be a necessary ingredient, fillip-wise.

The twelve-member Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee turned down six suggestions from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The committee had no esthetic objection to a stamp that would show a green wreath hanging from a white suburban door, but the block of white would foul up every color-sensitized Mark II Facer-Canceler in the country. Nor did the committee have artistic reservations about a cluster of pajamaed tots ogling their loot spread out under a Christmas tree; the design simply had too much detail for reproduction. Finally a Post Office illustrator offered the winning design—a wreath adorned by a red bow, and some amateurish lettering in Olde Englishe. It was calculated blah, and it will be reproduced 500 million times.