Every year, Swiss Post’s Christmas special stamps prove highly popular – and, in 2020, they come with an extra special treat. You can add an extra touch of festivity to your Christmas mail this year. Every sheet of stamps comes with numerous stickers that match the stamp and can be affixed to letters or parcels. What could be better than adding some special decorative flair to your mail at Christmas? The special stamps themselves are dedicated to wintry moments. They are the result of a competition that requested charming illustrations full of atmosphere. They depict situations that are familiar to us all during the winter months. With their warm and welcoming designs, you can almost smell the mulled wine and Christmas biscuits and see the flickering lanterns in front of you. But the motifs are broad enough to be used through the whole of winter and not just at Christmas. Link to Christmas stamps
50 years ago, homosexual and transgender people in New York made a stand against the police for the first time, in a series of demonstrations that would become known as the Stonewall riots.
This event inspired Swiss Post’s internal RAINBOW network to issue a special stamp. The Swiss motif with a face value of CHF 1 focuses on the coexistence of various lifestyles, portraying them all fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle. The CHF 0.85 motif from Liechtensteinische Post depicts the cultural and sexual diversity of a colourfully illustrated crowd of people. Link to Diversity stamps
Chocolate is an important symbol of Switzerland. However, the journey from the fruit of the cacao tree to melt-in-the-mouth temptation is a long one. This refinement process is being recognized in two special stamps. The fruits, which grow in the tropics, are harvested twice a year and each contain 20 to 30 initially white cocoa beans, which are dried after fermentation. The raw cocoa is then cleaned, broken down, roasted and ground. The resulting cocoa mass is mixed with sugar and cocoa butter. The result is the basic ingredient for chocolate. Milk chocolate is made by adding milk powder or condensed milk. Cocoa itself is anything but sweet. The Aztec word “xocóatl” – the origin of the word chocolate – actually means “bitter water”. Link to chocolate stamps
Swiss post office general information:
www.post.ch/en
Swiss post office shopping for stamps and other items:
www.postshop.ch/en/Home
Calculation of price of a stamp for a letter
From CH > Int’l/USA up to 20g: Fr. 2.-
From CH > Int’l/USA up to 50g: Fr. 3.80
From CH > Int’l/USA up to 100g: Fr. 5.-
From CH > EU/UK up to 20g: Fr. 1.40
From CH > EU/UK up to 50g: Fr. 2.20
From CH > EU/UK up to 100g: Fr. 2.90
