Christmas stamps 2008

Last year Melancholicus was struck with wonderment at the fact that, even in this brave new age of cultural ‘sensitivity’, An Post was so coarse and majoritarian as to use the word Christmas openly and shamelessly on their website. As if such were not sufficiently offensive to the devotees of lesser gods, to ethnic ‘minorities’, to Irish Times readers and to the liberal intelligentsia generally, An Post did not even scruple to issue, even to the very public, a special set of seasonal stamps with an unmistakably Christian theme.

Well, those good fellows are at it again this year! For Melancholicus has today sent off his first batch of Christmas cards (with more to go out tomorrow), and in doing so discovered that last year’s themed stamps were not an isolated incident quickly corrected by the self-appointed watchdogs of p.c. orthodoxy, but an annual event which brings a timely reminder amidst the commercially-driven excess of materialistic spending sprees of what Christmas is really all about.

This year’s offerings lack the aesthetic quality of those from 2007 (at least in Melancholicus’ opinion), but for all that they are just as unmistakably Christian. They feature (right to left) the Annunciation, the journey of the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph to Bethlehem, and the Divine Infant lying in the manger.

Once again, kudos to An Post for doing their bit to keep the religious tradition of this country alive in the face of the assaults it receives daily from ideologues who think they know better than the Holy Ghost.

And Christmas is still Christmas in Ireland; we do not (yet) address each other with banalities such as “happy holidays”, and the Angelus bell is still rung daily even on the mordantly anti-catholic media organ known as RTÉ.

But, the way things are going, for how much longer?