Where to place Christmas seals on mail

U.S. Stamp Notes by John M. Hotchner

The 1918 Christmas seal (Scott WX21), as seen in Figure 1, was issued by the American Red Cross. A large red cross logo above the statue of Lady Liberty is prominent in the design. Two recent finds add some context to the collecting of the 1918 seal.

First is the envelope in Figure 2, created at the state level to aid with the distribution of the 1918 seal. It does not specify which state. On the front of the one shown here it says, “Use [the seals] only on the back of letters and parcels. Not good for postage.”

Over the years I’ve accumulated about 20 mailed 1918 Christmas items. Most of them are postcards because that was the prevailing way of sending Christmas greetings in that era. It was counterintuitive to put the seals any place other than on the address side, and seals appear on the address side on 90 percent of what I have in my collection. One example of this is the postcard shown in Figure 3.

I’ve never seen an item in which the 1918 seal was used exclusively in place of postage.

The second interesting 1918 item concerns the design of the seal, shown on ...

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