Christmas cards, ready to be sent off.

Postnord some kind of effort for the holiday season. They make a set of Christmas-themed stamps that cost a tiny bit less than the ordinary ones and are only valid until the 15th of December, and they put up special red post boxes for these.

Today I learned that Postnord and its predecessor Posten have been giving out Christmas stamps since 1980. The price difference vs normal stamps has varied over time, ranging from 5% in 1987 (2.00 kr vs 2.10 kr) to 25% in 1998 (4.00 kr vs 5.00 kr). Currently we’re near the historical minimum, at 7% (14 kr vs 15 kr).

It still annoys me every year that they have no equivalent for international mail. And that they can’t even bother to internationalize the stamps most often used for sending stuff abroad. Motifs with pictures of Swedish cultural artifacts? Sure, go for it. Labelling those in Swedish? Kind of stupid, in my eyes.