Today’s Christmas activity: writing and posting Christmas cards.

The prices for international postage keep going up and up. The same used to be true for domestic mail, but now there is only one kind of stamp that is no longer printed with a specific price. It just says “Sverige Brev” and the stamps are valid forever, I guess. Or until PostNord decides differently.

PostNord likes selling stamps in packs and not singly. Most years we get one or two left over when we’ve mailed all our Christmas cards. And by the next Christmas, the leftover stamp is useless, because the price has increased. It’s easier to buy a new full-price stamp than to find low-value stamps to make up the price difference, so that leftover stamp remains in the drawer, waiting for a better year.

Now finally the price of domestic mail has nearly caught up with our oldest leftover international stamp, so I used it on the Christmas card going to my mum.

Another thing that keeps surprising me is how rarely PostNord makes any festive international stamps. For Sweden – yes. Christmas trees, snowflakes, reindeer and so on. But for my friends abroad, today I could choose between black and white scenes from Ingmar Bergman movies (seriously!) or a series of motifs with Swedish embroidery. Embroidery it is, then.