My favourite Christmas stamps

There have been GB Christmas stamps every year since 1966. Here are my favourite six sets

There have been Christmas stamps in Great Britain for 57 years now. The first ones were designed on children's artwork and the winners were decided after a competition on Blue Peter. They were rather nice but there were only two of them - a 3d stamp showing a king and then a 1/6 stamp with a snowman.

Obviously the competition judges were more interested in younger children's art. I have found that the winning artists were Tasveer Shemza and James Berry.

I also found out that there was a lot of complicated discussion about both the competition and whether there should be a Christmas stamp at all, but fortunately there was a competition and there were stamps for Christmas 1966 (and every Christmas after that). The rules of the competition were that only five colours could be used, which may have been a challenge for the young artists. There was a prize of £20, which doesn't seem a lot.

A lot has happened in the years since then and we have had billions of Christmas stamps issued. Some of these have made their way into my collection! As it's Christmas I have decided to look at my favourite GB stamps.

1987

These feel quite magical to me. They show how special Christmas is to a young boy. The use of the gold stars on the 13p stamp is really nice. Our family has a tradition of looking out for the first star on Christmas Eve so I particularly the 18p stamp.

1990

I like these because they show all the traditional fun things people do around Christmas. We have building a snowman, collecting a tree, carol singing outside, playing on a sled in the snow and ice skating on a lake. I'm not sure that anyone skates on lakes any more, at least not here in the UK, but maybe the stamps were looking back to Christmases in the past? Either way, the art is wonderful.

1993

So these were to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Charles Dickens book A Christmas Carol. Royal Mail had the ingenious idea of asking Quentin Blake to create the designs and the stamps are exactly what you would expect from Quentin. The art is in his simple style, colourful and great fun. The only change I would have made is having Scrooge on either the 1st (25p) or 2nd class (19p) value.

2002

Here is a really nice set. I bought it this year on Benham Silks as a present for my Grandma.

The stamps show plant life associated with winter. I think the 1st class stamp, showing holly, and the 68p stamp with the frosty pine cone are the most impacting. As a set it is really nice.

2004

Eleven years after the Christmas Carol set, Royal Mail again turned to a famous artist for their design. This time it was Raymond Briggs, the creator of The Snowman.

Briggs' style is instantly recognisable. I have some stamps of The Snowman from the Isle of Man but here he has instead focused on Father Christmas. Poor Father Christmas has to work through all kinds of terrible weather (a bit like Royal Mail workers) but he seems happy when the sun rises in the morning. These really are beautiful stamps and I am very pleased to have the miniature sheet.

2010

This was a big set with seven stamps. There had been Large Letter stamps since 2006 and usually these were just larger versions of the standard 1st and 2nd class stamps. With this Wallace and Gromit set we have a 1st class stamp and a Large version that are quite different. If you look closely at the Large stamp, the robin on top of the post box has flown away and instead we have the evil Feathers McGraw about to launch a very big snowball at Gromit!

I like Wallace and Gromit and I think these stamps captures the fun of the films.

These are six absolutely brilliant sets. There have been lots of other really good Christmas stamps but these are the ones that stand out for me. Which are your favourites?