For many people who send out greeting cards during the holiday season, it’s a tradition to buy holiday-themed stamps from the U.S. Postal Service.
This year, the artist chosen to design the special stamps is a graduate of Michigan State University.
About eight years ago, an agent for the postal service approached Denise Fiedler after seeing her artwork on greeting cards in a Washington D.C. shop. She said she’d love to do it.
Fiedler explains that it took all these years to have her designs issued partly because the post office wanted her to replace one of her initial ideas of having a Santa boot stamp as part of the set she put together.
“My agent asked, just a couple years ago, to change that image into another image that might be more universal for people,” she explained. "I redid the boot and made a holly wreath instead."
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Fiedler agrees the final group of four designs is better as a result, all now depicting nature themes. Along with the holly wreath, the others show a Bartlett pear and other fruits in the branches of an evergreen, a pair of cardinals perched on a mistletoe branch and amaryllis flowers tied with a red ribbon.
“I think during the holidays, we can get so busy, and our to do lists are so long, that it’s good to take time out and just reflect on simple things in nature,” Fiedler said. “I think the beauty of the holidays sometimes is just simply looking at an amaryllis plant or a cardinal.”
Fiedler works in collage. These holiday stamp images were assembled on 8x10 boards. After visualizing the image, she paints paper with gouache or acrylic paint before cutting the paper and arranging the pieces.
These are forever stamps, issued in booklets of 20. Along with the stamps, the postal service is selling notecards with Fiedler’s artwork.
She’s sharing her designs on Instagram and Facebook, and she says social media attention is boosting awareness of her design company, called Paste.
Fiedler says she was especially struck by something her nephew said to her about the project.
"It’s really the smallest piece of art, but it reaches so many people, you know? The reachability is so large. So, I’m really, really grateful for this moment.”
Fiedler feels lucky to have been chosen for the 2025 holiday stamp collection and becoming part of stamp history.
So, when you send out your greeting cards with the 2025 holiday stamps, you might want to mention to friends and family that the little bit of artwork on the corner of the envelope was produced by a Spartan.
