The U.S. Postal Service has issued its annual holiday stamps and they are on sale nationwide at all postal facilities, including the Lehigh Acres Post Office on Business Way. The stamps have a value of 44 cents each.

The Holiday Evergreens stamps come in four designs. Decorating with evergreens during the winter holiday season is a popular and appealing tradition. The new stamps feature close-up views of the foliage and cones of our different conifers -ponderosa pine, eastern red cedar, blue spruce, and balsam fir. The stamps come in double-sided booklets of 20. More than 157,000 stamps have been printed.

The artist, the late Ned Seidler, was a gifted painter of nature subjects. When painting flora, he frequently used cuttings from plants and trees in his own yard as reference. The artwork for the Evergreens stamps dates to the early 1990s.

Seidler died in 2007 at the age of 85. Beginning with the 20-cent Francis of Assisi commemorative stamp of 1982, he painted the pictures for 33 stamps and postal stationery items. The evergreens art was first created in 1992 but was put on hold.

The four no-denominational Holiday Evergreens stamps are part of the “forever” stamps to be issued by the Postal Service. Like the familiar Liberty Bell design that was first issued in 2007, these new stamps will be always valid for payment of postage for a one-ounce domestic letter, regardless of future rate increases.

This year, the stamps sell for 44 cents. Appropriately, the stamps picture needles, cones and berries of evergreen trees, symbolizing the evergreen nature of their postal value.

For the holiday season, angels represent peace on earth. The Angel with Lute stamp features an angel playing a lute, an image from a fresco painted around the year 1480 by Italian Renaissance artist, Melozzo da Forli, for the apse of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Rome. It radiates serenity and dignity, along with compassion, while the lute points to harmony and song. The painting resides at the Pinacoteca art gallery in Vatican City and measures approximately 37 inches by 46 inches. 400 million stamps have been printed.

Also available at post offices nationwide during the holiday season are previously issued 44-cent stamps: Madonna and Child, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Eid.

Customers have 90 days from the official first day of issuance date to obtain first day of sale postmarks on new stamps and stationery items. Collectors may request a local first day of sale postmark by mail only. There is no charge for servicing of first day of sale postmarks up to 50 covers. Mail-in customers must supply a self-addressed envelope with sufficient return postage applied to return the serviced covers.

To obtain the first day of sale postmark, mail stationery items bearing Holiday Evergreens or Angel with Lute stamps to: Customer Relations USPS, 79 Mid Cape Terrace Suite 8, Cape Coral, FL 33991. Please specify which city you are requesting a postmark for – Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Naples, or Sanibel. All orders must be postmarked by January 21, 2011.

Lehigh Acres was not on the list. If you want a first day postmark, contact the postmaster there.