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2026 First-Class Forever Stamps,Contemporary Christmas: Christmas Cookies
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2026 Christmas Cookies
- Set of 4 picturing decorated sugar cookies
- 2026 contemporary Christmas stamps
Stamp Category: Special
Set: Contemporary Christmas
Value: 82¢, First Class Mail Rate
First Day of Issue: September 19, 2026
First Day City: Washington, DC
Quantity Issued: 450,000,000
Printed by: Banknote Corporation of America
Printing Method: Offset
Format: Double-sided Booklet of 20
Why the stamp was issued: This set of four stamps was issued for use during the 2026 holiday season.
About the stamp design: Stamp designer Kyrie Johnson baked and decorated the cookies pictured on the stamps. They were photographed by Sarah Cramer Shields.
First Day City: The First Day of Issue ceremony took place at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum as part of a family-friendly celebration.
About the Contemporary Christmas series: The US issued its first Christmas stamp (picturing a wreath and candles) on November 1, 1962, and it was wildly popular. The Post Office printed 350 million stamps, the largest print run for a special stamp up to that time, but still the stamps quickly sold out. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing produced more to satisfy demand and the total number issued was over 860 million by the end of the year.
In 1966, the Post Office started issuing traditional themed Christmas stamps picturing the Madonna and Child and other religious icons. In 1969, they switched back to non-religious Christmas designs with a stamp picturing the painting Winter Sunday in Norway, Maine.
Finally, in 1970, the Post Office decided to permanently split Christmas stamps into two categories to satisfy everyone: Traditional and Contemporary. They issued a block of four stamps picturing Christmas toys along with a stamp picturing a classic painting of the Nativity. The decision to do both proved popular, and the Post Office has continued to issue stamps in both categories ever since.
History the stamp represents: The word “cookie” didn’t exist in English until an American put it in print. Dutch settlers in the Northeast had long used koekje - “little cake” - for the treat, and in 1796, that word finally reached a cookbook: Amelia Simmons’s American Cookery, the first this country produced rather than borrowed from Britain. Buried inside was a recipe called simply “A Christmas Cookey.”
Simmons’s cookie bore little resemblance to anything on a plate today. The batch required a full pound of butter, three times that much flour, heavy coriander, and pearlash, an early forerunner of baking soda. Once baked, the cookies went into an earthenware pot, left to sit for months before eating.
Two centuries later, nobody waits that long. Butter and sugar still get creamed together, dough still gets shaped by hand, and the oven still fills a kitchen with the smell of the season - but what once took months now takes minutes. The spices changed, the wait disappeared, and the shapes multiplied into gingerbread men, sugar cookies, and dozens more. What hasn’t changed is the instinct behind Simmons’s original recipe: an American reaching for flour and butter to mark the holiday, the same instinct that fills the platters and cookie tins nationwide today.
2026 Christmas Cookies
- Set of 4 picturing decorated sugar cookies
- 2026 contemporary Christmas stamps
Stamp Category: Special
Set: Contemporary Christmas
Value: 82¢, First Class Mail Rate
First Day of Issue: September 19, 2026
First Day City: Washington, DC
Quantity Issued: 450,000,000
Printed by: Banknote Corporation of America
Printing Method: Offset
Format: Double-sided Booklet of 20
Why the stamp was issued: This set of four stamps was issued for use during the 2026 holiday season.
About the stamp design: Stamp designer Kyrie Johnson baked and decorated the cookies pictured on the stamps. They were photographed by Sarah Cramer Shields.
First Day City: The First Day of Issue ceremony took place at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum as part of a family-friendly celebration.
About the Contemporary Christmas series: The US issued its first Christmas stamp (picturing a wreath and candles) on November 1, 1962, and it was wildly popular. The Post Office printed 350 million stamps, the largest print run for a special stamp up to that time, but still the stamps quickly sold out. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing produced more to satisfy demand and the total number issued was over 860 million by the end of the year.
In 1966, the Post Office started issuing traditional themed Christmas stamps picturing the Madonna and Child and other religious icons. In 1969, they switched back to non-religious Christmas designs with a stamp picturing the painting Winter Sunday in Norway, Maine.
Finally, in 1970, the Post Office decided to permanently split Christmas stamps into two categories to satisfy everyone: Traditional and Contemporary. They issued a block of four stamps picturing Christmas toys along with a stamp picturing a classic painting of the Nativity. The decision to do both proved popular, and the Post Office has continued to issue stamps in both categories ever since.
History the stamp represents: The word “cookie” didn’t exist in English until an American put it in print. Dutch settlers in the Northeast had long used koekje - “little cake” - for the treat, and in 1796, that word finally reached a cookbook: Amelia Simmons’s American Cookery, the first this country produced rather than borrowed from Britain. Buried inside was a recipe called simply “A Christmas Cookey.”
Simmons’s cookie bore little resemblance to anything on a plate today. The batch required a full pound of butter, three times that much flour, heavy coriander, and pearlash, an early forerunner of baking soda. Once baked, the cookies went into an earthenware pot, left to sit for months before eating.
Two centuries later, nobody waits that long. Butter and sugar still get creamed together, dough still gets shaped by hand, and the oven still fills a kitchen with the smell of the season - but what once took months now takes minutes. The spices changed, the wait disappeared, and the shapes multiplied into gingerbread men, sugar cookies, and dozens more. What hasn’t changed is the instinct behind Simmons’s original recipe: an American reaching for flour and butter to mark the holiday, the same instinct that fills the platters and cookie tins nationwide today.
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