About This Stamp
Four Christmas Cookies stamps celebrate the holiday season with uniquely decorated sugar cookies in the shape of a Christmas tree, a stocking, a wrapped present, and Santa’s face.
Since their introduction in 1962, Contemporary Christmas stamps have added a cheerful touch to holiday cards and letters. While not issued every year, new designs have appeared annually since 2001.
Christmas cookies have previously appeared on stamps, including Holiday Cookies (2005) and Christmas Carols (2017). The latest stamps will be the first to include cookies shaped like a present and a stocking.
While researching new ideas for the latest Contemporary Christmas stamp, art director Greg Breeding decided he might like to do a fun new take on Christmas cookies. After reviewing the latest design trends and the work of cookie designers and bakers in the field, he enlisted Kyrie Johnson to design, bake, and decorate the cookies. Then he recruited photographer Sarah Cramer Shields to photograph them.
But creating the final product wasn’t without its challenges.
“Cookies crumble! The transportation of the cookies from Kyrie to Sarah was nerve-racking,” says Breeding, who co-designed the stamps with Johnson. “We had a little shuffling of cookies in transit, but we’ve retouched those little flaws in post-production.”
The Christmas Cookies stamps are being issued as Forever® stamps in booklets of 20. These Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail ® one-ounce price.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Greg Breeding
Greg Breeding is a graphic designer and principal of Journey Group, a design company he co-founded in 1992, located in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was creative director until 2013, at which time he began serving as president and continued in that role through 2023.
Breeding’s fascination with modernism began while studying design at Virginia Commonwealth University. His affinity with the movement continues and motivates his ongoing advanced studies at the Basel School of Design in Switzerland most every summer.
As an art director for postage stamp design since 2012, Breeding has designed more than 100 stamps covering a diverse array of subjects, from Star Wars droids and Batman to Harlem Renaissance writers and the transcontinental railroad.
His work has been recognized in annual design competitions held by Graphis, AIGA, PRINT magazine, and Communication Arts.
Breeding lives in North Garden, Virginia, with his wife and enjoys nothing so much as frolicking on the floor with his grandchildren.
Stamp Designer
Kyrie Johnson
Photographer
Sarah Cramer Shields
Sarah Cramer Shields is a documentary photographer and the owner of Cramer Photo in Charlottesville, Virginia. With degrees in fine art photography and cultural anthropology from the University of Virginia, she focuses her work on telling people’s stories. Her passion for photography derives from her ability to find the natural beauty of a subject.
Her images have been published in numerous newspapers and magazines and in five cookbooks, and she has photographed notable personalities including journalist Katie Couric, musician Dave Matthews, and restauranteur/philanthropist José Andrés. She is very proud of her collaborative work on Porchraits, a project that documented over 1,000 Virginia families on their front porches during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Freshwater Fishing Lures is Cramer Shields’s first project for the U.S. Postal Service.