Christmas Carols Forever First Class Postage Stamps

Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls, Silent Night, Jolly Old Saint Nicholas - one design each, with a familiar line from every song printed on its stamp. Steve McCracken made the original art and the late Howard E. Paine was the art director. The backgrounds run through shades of blue, which is how the set holds together: all four carols are evening scenes, and the color does that work before the illustration does. Issued in New York in October 2017, in double-sided booklets of 20 with five of each design.

These are for Christmas cards, and specifically for the households that send a lot of them. A booklet of 20 rarely covers a full list, so most buyers take several. The advantage of Forever stamps here is that December always overshoots - whatever is left in the book on 26 December still covers a one-ounce letter at the current 82¢ rate in March, which is not true of the dated seasonal stamps people used to throw away.